My Writing About The Young Adult Stage

I decided to write about the young adult stage. I chose this stage because I am currently in this stage in life and I can relate a lot more to it because I am living in it. I believe that my physically development has ran through my mind a lot. As a young adult, I focus on my physical appearance a lot more than I did when I was in the middle years of the adolescence stage. I also found myself exercising a lot more than what I would have in my adolescence stage. In high school, I played sports such as Lacrosse and I was also on the Cheer squad so I was already doing a lot of exercising but now I am afraid to gain too much weight.

I always think what would people think about an overweight Jasmine instead of what do people think of me in general. I am slowly realizing that my body will not stay the same all my life. I will grow in certain areas more than others. My metabolism will not always be as fast as it used to be. It will be a lot easier for me to gain weight now than when I was in my early adolescence years. At this point in age, I realize that I am at my peak. I will not do too much more growing.

In young adulthood, the brain is already fully developed and I am able to make great decision by myself and use my knowledge for accurate judgement. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain covering the frontal lobe. This part of the brain helps aid cognitive behavior, personality expressions, decision making and social behaviors. (www.thescienceofpsychotherapy.com) When in the young adolescence stage, the prefrontal cortex part of your brain is not developed to full capacity. Meaning you will be lacking knowledge and skills like decision making at a young age. Your decisions will still be highly and easily influenced by others.

Now as a young adult, My prefrontal cortex is fully developed and I can make decisions and not worry much about the outcome because I can weigh out my options with critical thinking. Jean Piaget noted that there is a significant difference in the thinking process of an adolescence and an adult mind. (www.allpsychologycareers.com) An adult has the mind that is more flexible. They are able to think from different angles of a situation while an child or adolescent mind thinks from a one sided perspective. Adults understand everyone has a different opinions. Adolescence only see that one thought can be the only right thought.

Theorist Erik Erikson says that in the early adulthood stage is the time that individuals seek to form intimate relationships. This could consist of friends, boyfriend/ girlfriend, or starting a family. In the adolescence stage, they are typically just more worried about friends. They tend to choose their friend over their family. Some adolescents may think it is easier to communicate with their friends than it is with their family members. Sadly, mental illness is very common in young adults. Taking the lead is Depression. Depression is a serious mood disorder than can cause you to feel unhappy and affect the way you feel, think, and navigate through life. Depression is very common and can be set off by many things. I myself have suffered from depression from dealing with a family death.

For the report portion of this assignment, I interviewed Megan Crenshaw. She’s a 21 year old female. She is a friend of the family that falls into the season. I interviewed her at Smoothie King on N. Lindbergh on December 12. We started the interview at 13:24 p.m. Megan is a college student that is almost done with her degree in Early Childhood Education. She has one more semester left until graduation. I started the interview with “How does it feel to be a young adult?” You are almost done with your college degree and soon to be moving out on your own, tell me a little bit about it. Megan Responded “ It actually feels really great to be moving through life. Getting the degree has been a bit of a challenge but it has been a great experience and a huge eye opener. College is a different type of struggle if you ask me.

College made me go into depression, making me want to quit but I had to see the bigger picture. I’ve grown. After I finish my degree, I will be moving out the house that following Fall. I will be out on my own. I feel that It will give me a great sense of responsibility. I am pretty great when it comes to decision making so I think the move will be more like a piece of cake. I am ready to leave the nest and live on my own.” A worker from Smoothie King actually put in her input and said “I actually thought it was pretty confusing at first. It was really confusing because you have to learn how to do stuff on your own. Yes, your parents are there for you but not really in the same sense.

You feel rushed to get your life together. You may feel like you are too young to be out on your own but at the same time you feel like you are too old for your parents to still be taking care of you. In my opinion, most of the time whenever you take two steps forward you always get knocked three steps back.” I went on to ask Meganbfbfbfb, “ How’s the relationships in your life?” Megan responded, “Right now, I actually am not dating. I took a break from dating for awhile, it just was not working for me.” I asked her, “What about your friends? Those count as relationships” Megan, “I actually have a lot of friends. Most of the friends that I have we actually only really interact over the phone or through social media. Now that I mentioned that, being a kid I would have felt like they were not my real friends because we did not spend time together.

When I was young, my friends were like my backbone. I always had to have a friend. I do not feel the same about that anymore. Friends are nice and all but I can do without as well. I won’t die because I do not have friends. I will find at least one good friend throughout life. I feel that is apart of being an adult. You do not always have time to chill and hang. Definitely with me being in school and working at the same time. The actually friends that I do hang with is not a huge group. Like when I was younger, we would hang out in really big groups and now I prefer maybe one or two people with me. No more than three.”

Sadly, we had to cut the interview short because Megan had to leave but I got the chance to ask her one more question. “If you can sum up the young adulthood stage with the experiences that you’ve had, what would you tell the adolescents?” Megan said, “I personally would tell them to get ready to experience life. This is the stage where it will get real. Everything will come your way at once. You will have many moments that you feel like you can not get through physically and mentally but you can. You will experience love for at least the first time. You will probably have changes in your life that you were not expecting but have to learn how to deal with them. You may gain some weight here and there but hey!!! Who cares? Be yourself and do your best. When life gives you lemons, you better make lemonade. Like the chick-fil-a lemonade not the regular boring lemonade.”

For the summary portion, I used an article called “ Today’s young adults are different, but not for the reasons you might think” by Kathryn Dill created at 10:37 AM ET. Monday, April 24, 2017. This is an informational article that describes today’s young adults as different. They are called different because of the way they handle life and how they their decisions in leaving home with their parents to move on independently is a lot different than the generation before them. This article mentions that in the 1970’s, by the age 20, most people were expected to begin the “family formation” stage in life. That is the period of time where individuals find their match and begin to have a family. In this current generation, that is happening less often.

People are actually waiting until their late twenties and early thirties to have children and get married. Many of individuals between the age of 18 through 30 years old depends on the financial help from their parents. A lot of people consider 21 to still be an immature age but a lot of people disagree. This article helps sum up that everyone does everything at a different pace. There is no need to rush the independent stage. You will get there one day no matter how long it took the generation before you.