Teenagers Being More Emotional than Other Age Groups Isn’t a Trend, It’s a Phase of Life

Many times I would hear adults over 25 say that students should cherish the time spent at school with friends, doing home works and performing school tasks but, they don’t explicitly say that adulting is all about paying bills, saving up, working 12 hours in shift, going home exhausted and you still have house chores waiting at home. I’m not saying this because I could relate well with the adults. Other than my graduation happening this week, I was hoping to finish the compilation of my photography portfolio.

So, I saw a bunch of photos with my classmates as the subject of focus. I pride myself on taking eye-capturing scenes and pictures. Something about being assigned to you a role that I never asked for but felt so right was what I did as a class photographer. Among my batchmates, I was the only person with a DSLR camera — it would be filled with tons of different faces and memories with these people.

Now regaining the insight that adults like to say about cherishing the moments as a student before payday starts, I realized high school is hoping you do more for others and yourself but being aware that at the time, it wasn’t easy to do. It’s mainly not because of selfishness that decisions that enrich relationships, as well as the self, are lost to time. I want that for me if I could return time or experience it all over again. It’s what makes life worthwhile even after the stage of being a student is done and more are coming.

When viewed from a perspective, most of the growth in a human occurs in puberty, the period of adolescence — a neck-to-neck tier with infancy to early childhood years. The human brain is only fully matured around 25 years old. The first to form in the brain regions is the limbic system, which is responsible for memory and emotion. The part that fully matures at 25 is the prefrontal cortex which is situated in the frontal lobe. The function of the prefrontal cortex is to stimulate higher-order thinking processes, such as attention, problem-solving, or critical thinking. Teenagers being more emotional than other age groups isn’t a trend, it’s a phase of life.

Suppose you pair up an underdeveloped adolescent brain with the forces of their environment. In that case, you get a mashed-up mix of peer pressure, societal standards, identity crisis, and a host of other problems that make this period of life for the individual vulnerable to changes and distress. No wonder most of the mental health crises humans face, appear during this vulnerable stage.

This is why as much as I appreciate giving more to others in high school, depositing trust in the relationship was difficult. I realized after finishing my studies that genuine friendships are so important. There was a huge gap between what I achieved and what my friends from high school knew about me compared to my classmates in college. All those achievements are a compilation of personal and academic ordeals. However, the personal aspect was even more pronounced, therefore positively affecting the academic part.

If I were to turn back time and experience high school all over again, I would have been there for friends more than I’ve done; Valued their presence more and asked how they were doing; Maybe even offered more help to others than I’ve served. I would have indulged in self-praise every second I could get and skipped self-criticisms in every moment it happened. In another universe where it didn’t go awry, where my mental health wasn’t on a lopsided route, where society was more accepting, I hoped I gave myself more love than ever possible.

Amidst this sentimental realization, I understand how things were difficult to be possible. People take a look back only when they have already walked past. (literally). That is probably the essence of life in having the past as something you can only look back on, appreciating and giving the chance to evaluate how the experience was for you so that next time, you know what to do.