Adolescent Autobiography

Chapter 14: BIOSOCIAL The things that I wanted to mention which about Puberty Begins was “menarche”. About menarche, it is a girl’s first menstrual period signaling that she had begun ovulation. Pregnancy is biologically possible, but ovulation and menstruation are often irregular for years after menarche. The current average age of menarche among well-nourished girls is about 12 years, 8 months. According to my personal experience of menarche, I remember my menarche was happened about 12 years old. (The first grade of Secondary School) Luckily, it happened during my summer holiday and I was staying at home. When I had menarche, I shouted out loud; I was frightened and didn’t know what I should do, because I was bleeding without stopped. My mum was not here and my housekeeper helped me out. She taught me how to use sanitary towel. In contrast, the things which different from my experience in adolescence is spermarche. It is because I am a girl and spermarche is the things which happened with a boy. It means a boy’s first ejaculation of sperm. Erections can occur as early as infancy, but ejaculation signals sperm production. Sepermarche may occur during sleep (in wet dream”) or via direct stimulation. Because I am a girl, so I will not have spermarche when I was under age 13. On the other hand, about Nutrition there are one topic which is similar to my experience of adolescence is “Body image”. According to Halpern, he said “girls go on diets because they want to be thinner, partly because a boy tends to prefer to date thin girls.” For me, I did same things----go on diets. When I was 13 years old, I stared to care about my body image. Whenever someone said I looked more fat than before, I will do a lot of exercises and ate less food. As the book said, the reason that girls want to be thinner is because we wanted to be an attractive girl. I don’t think so! The reason that I wanted to look thinner was because I was a ballerina. As a ballerina, being thinner was our responsibility. It was because we could dance beautifully and being a good looking perfumers during the performing. Chapter 15: COGNITIVE The things that I want to mention is about Adolescent Thinking. There is an idea which I wanted to share and it is quite similar with my personal experience----Fables. It develop into two categories, they are personal fable and invincibility. These two fables often appear together. The egocentric idea of the personal fable is that one is unique, destined to have a heroic, even legendary, life. When adolescents think they are invincible, they may be convinced that, unlike other mortals, they will not be hurt by fast driving, unprotected sex, or addictive drugs. If they take any of these risks and survive without harm, they feel special, not thankful. Also, adolescents ignore evidence from developmental statistics, because they believe that they are exceptional, exempt from normal human vulnerability. Therefore, when I was a Form 2 student, I did something which was bad. I remember that, when we were having lesson we did some trick to the teacher. We stuck a paper behind the back of the teacher and we wrote “I am the most handsome person” Whenever a student passed to this teacher will laugh out loud. Anyhow, it ended up with we all got punished. This is a typical adolescence will do during the age in Secondary School; useless; just for fun. In contrast, there is one idea which is different from my experience in adolescence--- “hypothetical thought”. It means reasoning that includes propositions and possibilities that may not reflect reality. According to Lutz& Sternberg, they said “Adolescent start with possible solutions and progress to determine which the real solution is”. In my personal experience, I don’t even think about the “trick” that I did will be work out or not. I just did it with my Intuition. So, the result was being punished. On the other hand, the other things that I want to mention is teaching and learning. There are some similarities which between the text book and my personal experience. One of them is “The Digital Divide”, Digital Divide is the gap between people who have access to computers and those who do not, often a gap between rich and poor. In the United States and most other developed nation, this gap has now been bridged as computers have become almost universally present in schools and libraries. In my personal experience, when I was a student of Secondary school, we will text our message during class. Some of my classmates even used their cell phone to cheat during exam. At home, I and my sister will have less communication to each other, because we will use some “chat room”(ICQ/MSN) to talk to each other whenever we want to know something else. For friends, we will talk through the cell phone instead of talk to each other by face to face. In contrast, about “less learning” it is quite different from my personal experience. According to Crosnoe, he said “Many develop mentalists think that one crucial problem in middle school is that student lose close connection to teachers, partly because each teacher has dozen, sometimes hundreds of students. Large class sizes are troublesome because throughout secondary education, bonding between students and teachers is a key to student learning as well as to helping children avoid risky behavior. In Hong Kong, we will have 30 students for being in one class. The classes that we got in were not randomly, it base on our grade. So, it was easier whenever the teacher taught the class in same level “learning ability”. If we didn’t catch up the things that teacher taught us, we will have extra class after school or even during holiday.(the student who have poor grade during the exam) So, we won’t lose close connection to teachers which because we have to much people in class.

Chapter 16: PSYCHOSOCIAL
The things which are similar with my personal experience are “Sexuality” and “Sadness and Anger”. About Sexuality, the friends of both sexes are the most similar with my personal experience. According to the book, Adults sometimes worry about boy-girl contact, assuming that teenagers will have sex if adults are not nearby. They also worry about close boy-boy and girl-girl friendships, fearing homosexuality. However, many teenagers do have close, even passionate, friendships with peers of both sexes, without romantic undertones. The personal experience that I have was happened during the age of secondary school. I had a best friend who is a boy. We studied together, having lunch together and went school together. But we were friends, the reason that we had close relationship was because we grow up in a same church; same ward. However, my mother thought we were being together (fall in love) without her permission. So, she never let me do “sleep over” stuffs. Even I was 18 years old and I was going to sleep with some girls without guys. (In Hong Kong, 18 years old are the age of being an adult) I did explain many times, but my mum seems didn’t believe my explanation. In contrast, there is one thing which is difference from my personal experience which in “Sexuality”. It was the part of “Gay relationship”. In the Secondary school of Hong Kong, lesbian are more common than gay. Almost every Secondary school of Hong Kong will have a couple of lesbian.
Especially schools which accept girls only are more lesbian than a school which combines with boys and girls. According to Baumeister & Blackhart, they said “Most girls who later identify as lesbian are oblivious to, or in denial of, their sexual urges in adolescence, perhaps because sexual self-knowledge is more difficult for girls. Therefore, most of lesbian’s friend told me that the reason that they became lesbian were not because their sexual self-knowledge were not good enough. It was because they had terrible relationship in a normal relationship (a couple creates by a boy and a girl), so they had lost the interest of being with a guy as her eternal partner. Most of my friend who become a lesbian are still lose the interest of being with a guy. About the sadness and anger, there are some similarly and different which between the text book and my personal experience.
It is “clinical depression.” Clinical depression is a feeling of hopelessness, lethargy and worthlessness that last two weeks or more. It happened in the age of Secondary School, whenever I got bad grade on my test or I didn’t dance well in my lesson of ballet. I felt depressed. Not because I couldn’t be a successful person, it because I let my parent down. According to Graber, These conditions predate adolescence and occur for both sexes, but something happens at puberty to push many vulnerable children, especially the girls, into despair. The rate of clinical depression more than doubles during this time, to an estimated 15 percent, affecting about 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys. In contrast, about “suicide” I didn’t thought about this action during my adolescence’s life. According to the book, “suicidal ideation” is a thought which about suicide, usually with some serious emotional and intellectual or cognitive. For me, whenever I have a serious emotional problem I will dance for an hour for expressing my stress through the music and movement. Suicide is a really stupid action that I have every see. It didn’t solve the problems when you kill yourself, the things that you choose is escape and left the problems to your beloved family. It is an irresponsibility action for escaping the problems.
SPIRITUAL
I choose “go forward with Faith” and “family” as the strength of young. Faith is a really important in our life; especially we are going forward to be a successful person. Having faith with our Heavny father is the most important things in my life. When I was the age of adolescence, I lost my faith which between me and the god. I was being an inactive member in my entire “Secondary School’s life”. There were bunches of excuse for me of not going to the house of lord. But he didn’t give up her daughter; he did guide me to the right way. Now, I am an active member and I have an opportunities for being a student of BYU-I. (A spiritual school)In Moroni 7:24, it said “ And behold, there were divers ways that he did manifest things unto the children of men, which were good ; and all things which are good cometh of Christ; otherwise men were fallen, and there could no good thing come unto them.” About family, it is a unit which being with you in your eternal life. We will not be separate, no matter what. Whenever I felt depression will my “love relationship” or the stress of my daily life, my family will always be with me. Although we are separate with different country, we are still being together through our heart and mind.