Become aware of how mature you should be for your age. It’s the umbrella that affects everything.

• Take the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) – to learn how you tick.
• Learn about your family. https://www.generaladvice.org/rate-your-family/ .   [More sites are needed.]
• Be open to individual and group therapy. Also family therapy.  We didn’t hear of it in my day.

Your maturity affects your

• Values –  https://timelessissues.com/traditional-values-are-absolutely-basic/
• View of sex – https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/teens.  We didn’t have sex-education.  Do most anything to avoid an unplanned pregnancy, which happens 45% of the time in the U.S.  42% of those end in abortion [which I favor].
• Idealism – cults, communes, radical religion or extreme politics to save the world.

Other

• Avoid joining the military. I was in when you had to join. Waste.
• Take interest tests.
• Take the Stanford-Binet IQ test to be realistic about how hard you will have to work if you choose college. No point in breaking your heart.
• Choose schools that teach practical skills. Much of college does not.  Half the courses I was required to take in college were useless.  All that effort and expense for nothing.  But if you feel you have to get college degree or the equivalent, search for every possible shortcut:  – alternatives to college – competency-based education  – comprehensive tests for college credit  – credit for job experience  – credit for what you know  – equivalency exams  – micro degrees, etc.  I wish I’d had them. One such program, as of 018, was http://discoverpraxis.com/.
• The idea is to live and work in the real world. College is not.  Idealism is not.  The military is not – compared to civilian life.  Some say religion is not.  Working for the government is not as much as the private sector is.
• Job hunting tips – https://www.generaladvice.org/job-hunting-tips/  The best ‘therapy’ I ever got.

Over the years you will see people making lots of mistakes.  The earlier you start on the above the better.

====================================================== = = =

More:

As a former school bus driver, AmeriCorps-VISTA volunteer, teacher, social worker, political aide, landlord, and as a senior, I continue:

If raised in an oppressive, overly strict family, you will read this as if taking on more heavy burdens to plod thru life with, bowed over by these ideas as great weights.  If raised in a sensible family, you’ll listen to the below and come out well.  If raised in a family that has spoiled you, you won’t know what I’m talking about, or care – everyone owes you everything; why be responsible?
My youth was in the 50s.  Those times were not as permissive as today.  Students, teachers and principals dressed better.  Teachers had more authority.  We didn’t need security guards on campus. We didn’t have social promotion, easy scholarships, and student loans.  People weren’t entitled to food stamps, extended unemployment benefits, medicaid, legal aid, rent subsidies, heat subsidies and easy access to disability.  We didn’t go for counseling when the sun didn’t come out.  Unskilled work wasn’t ‘menial’.  It was a job you were glad to have and you took pride in it.

Background

You’re predestined in many ways by your family, neighborhood, and schools.  You’ll be a lot like your folks and speak and think like your teenage friends.

Hopefully your parents will get you into good schools.  https://www.timelessissues.com/category/education/education-myths/

Teen years   13-20

Some adults feel they missed something in their youth and tend to live through you and fawn over you telling you you are the first to discover slang, the opposite sex, muscles, curves, music, rhythm, dances, styles, cars, sports, hanging out, cruising, being macho and feminine, discovering thrills, what is ‘in and out`, first to have such energy, disagree with your folks, ‘rebel’, search for your identity, be in a ‘new’ era, discover hypocrisy, want ‘change’ … blah blah.

Some adults cater to you, want you to buy their records, clothes, food, entertainment, magazines, movies, sports equipment, and join their cult, crusade, cause, religion and save the world.

Dynamics

You feel invincible and know everything.

Peer pressure is very strong and can help or hurt.

You want freedom but not the responsibility that comes with it – especially if spoiled.

You don’t have experience and you lack judgment.  You need input from older people.

Your folks should have raised you with traditional values.  Then you would have listened when they and other adults told you about smoking, alcohol, drugs, sex, lgbt, love, cults, and sects.

Other:

Don’t fight – too much chance of permanent injury and lawsuits.

Don’t go to extremes over sports.

Some youth live by, through, and for music – feeling it will cure the world. You’re often told rock and roll and fast dancing were new. Wrong – before them there was jitterbug, boogie woogie, the lindy, the charleston …..

You’re told the Beatles and folk singers changed the world.  They wish.

Don’t try to be the most popular; your strengths may be in other areas.  Play to your strengths.  Very important.

You’re first judged on your appearance.  The more on the outside, the less on the inside – meaning the youth that goes overboard with the hair, tattoos, piercings and clothes on the outside, is trying to make up for what he or she lacks on the inside.

The way you dress affects your behavior.  Dress conservatively.  It will help when applying for a job.  So will not having tattoos and piercings.

The second way you’re judged is how you talk – clearly, politely, intelligently, confidently, without resorting to ‘ya know, ahhh, like I mean, ya know, ahh, know what I’m saying…. ‘

You have a huge advantage with the internet, gps, and cell phones.  Computers can make you feel dumb.  You’re not.  Hang in and you will eventually learn what you can use.

Some adults tell you you can be anything you want.  Then you get into something you can’t handle, fail, and you blame yourself.  You can’t be anything you want, but you can be more than what you are.

‘Child’ is used to describe anyone under 18.  Nonsense.  A teenager is not a ‘child’.

You can avoid poverty if you finish high school, get a full-time job and wait till you’re 21 to get married and have children, according to the Brookings Institute.

Don’t ever buy a new car………. if you want to save money.

Military

Many young people join to mature – big mistake.  While the military offers some unique experiences, you’ll mature and progress better and faster in the real world.

College

• Some people get college degrees and never secure a job worth the effort it took.
• Some colleges keep students for their sports ability. One couldn’t read a menu.  Tennis players can turn pro at age 15.  Why not others?   Because colleges don’t want to lose the money certain sports bring in.
• Many students graduate verbose, self-centered, thinking they are objective and not prejudiced and feel they have a monopoly on truth.
• https://timelessissues.com/college-is-not-the-real-world/

Freedom

Between finishing school without huge debt and starting a family you are FREE.  It’s a wonderful, glorious time – a chance to travel which the Australians call a ‘walkabout’.  Germans call it a ‘wunder year’.  Others chase dreams in Hollywood, Nashville, Wash, D.C., or New York.  There are those who never had the chance to follow their dreams and wonder for years if they could have made it.  There are those who took the chance, worked hard, failed, but glad they tried.  Of those that made it, some say the best part was the journey, not the final success.  I wouldn’t trade anything for the 8 years I spent in New York after finishing college.

Age  20-25

• The media worshiped the baby boomers, born 1946 – 64, because there were so many of them.
• ‘Lost generation’ –  a silly term.
• The media worshipped Woodstock.  Conservative George Will said it was delayed adolescence, mass immaturity, and sandbox revolution.
• Bruno Bettelheim said hippies’ emotional development was at level of a temper tantrum.
• Beware of fads and far out stuff: dowsing, poltergeist, apparitions, fire walking, telepathy, premonition, reincarnation, channeling, bending silverware, weegie boards, up with people, moral rearmament, miracles, new age stuff …
• Put aside the naive, blind, forced over-emphasis on positives, feel-good, togetherness, relationships-mania, everyone being equal in every way, everyone’s a winner, everything’s ‘new’, and other pied piper schemes.
• Hippies and others with a fuzzy, odd appearance usually have fuzzy, odd ideas.
• Don’t put your leaders on a pedestal and believe in them more than you believe in yourself.
• Don’t look for a magic person in romance, friendship, work or anything.
• Don’t look for a set of beliefs that claims to have all the answers.
• Some years back 18 yr. olds cried out to lower the voting age to 18. It was lowered and only 30% of them voted.

Idealism, extremism, liberalism, religion

https://timelessissues.com/americorps-idealistic/
https://timelessissues.com/extremism/
https://timelessissues.com/liberal-vs-conservative/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antireligion

Cults

‘Cults appeal to young people with low self-esteem in their late teens and early 20s when they are forming their identities and are most open to changing their religious outlook.  The breakup of a relationship, death of a loved one, etc.  leave some vulnerable.  They want the 24-hour structure and authority of a cult.  It simplifies life.  There is sleep deprivation, limiting outside contacts, and a lack of privacy and time for reflection.  They give up their worries.   They think more of others than themselves.  They look to gurus.

‘The philosophy isn’t the main draw.  It’s the warmth and enthusiasm of members or the charisma of the leader, acceptance, belonging at the price of their thinking and identity.  Leaders become corrupted by power.  The majority of members in hi-demand groups leave in year or two.’  [Source unknown]

Work

• I read the working class wants to leave school, work and start a family earlier than the rest of the population. They’re less interested in college and shouldn’t be made to feel they should go.
• Some of you don’t know much about work because of being spoiled and because of minimum wage, unions, licensing, and ‘child’ labor laws.
• I’ve hired 18 yr. old immigrants that worked circles around American 18 yr. olds.
• If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
• You won’t make a lot of money right out of high school.
• Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity, nor is minimum wage.
• The more minimum wage is raised, the more young people are kept out of entry jobs – especially minority youth.
• Many people, even with advanced qualifications, have to settle for work they are not wild about.
• Sometimes employers hire people on as temporaries so they can see who they want to keep as permanents.
• Many people work for the government as those jobs are more secure.
• The goal for many is independence, but few achieve it.

Singles    –   The singles circuit (generaladvice.org)

Summary

• You’re at a great age – full of energy, creativity, ideas, and plans.
• You don’t have to figure out everything by age 25.
• You feel you will be trim and fit forever, find a great job, find a magic person for romance, and make a lot of money. Be practical.
• Keep an overview.
• Continually work on discovering your primary interests.
• You’re limited physically [in sports] and mentally [in school], but not in character – develop good values.
• Equally important is your mental health – are you angry, alienated, compulsive, spoiled, overly-generous, whatever?
• Many parts of life are unfair.
• You’ll be amazed at the failures you‘ll have to endure. They can make or break you.

Many successful people had many failures but learned to benefit from them.  PRINCE was a famous recording artist.  Half his projects were failures.  Failures are guidelines.

• You will find a huge lack of common sense in most people and every kind of work – especially government work as it doesn’t have the competition the private sector does.
• Definitely go to reunions – they are good for perspective.
• Someday you’ll be giving advice like this.

 

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