[Essay]The Best and Worst aspects of being a Teenager.

The topic title is the subject, please tell what I can add/remove, critic away! Told to write in approx 360-600 words.
Being a teenager is really tough. It's the where you have to deal and cope with the most changes, in your whole life. This transition from childhood to adulthood is smooth for some, but rough for others. The most important thing about being a teenager is responsibility. When you're a teenager, you get blamed for anything wrong you do, get grounded, punished, unlike before when you were a child, and you could get away with murder, and nobody could do anything about it! You can say goodbye to those days now!

It's all not so bad about being a teenager though. Now you don't have to have your parents take you to somewhere you want to go, and somewhere you couldn't go before. You can go with friends and have fun, which you couldn't because all of you were too little to know what fun is! You can now go to amusement parks, parties etc. with friends, or even alone. It's a very enjoyable time of life, if you do the right stuff, and put thought into what you are doing. But with all good things, must come the bad. During this age, you are old and hopefully smart enough to understand what is good for you, and make decisions without consulting others. But with that comes risk, and nowadays, fun stuff are usually bad stuff.

With the society turning for the bad as days pass, the teens are getting into all sorts of trouble with drugs and alcohol. Thirty years ago, drugs were something that older people never talked about and nor did they ever see. Alcohol was small thing that the good people such as churchgoers never touched, but they preached about it. Every town has a town drunk. In today's society teens see alcohol and drugs at least once a day or more. Thirty years ago drugs were a little harder to find, teenagers did not have access at the time. So, today they face more peer pressure to where now it is illegal and thirty years ago it was legal and not a problem.

Also, teenagers are under much pressure for their studies, because if they don't pass, they don't get jobs, and things take turn for the worse. With the world economy in crisis, you have to do really, really well in your educational degrees, to even have a look in for a job. It's really taking a toll on teenagers these days, and bad thing is, they can't do anything about it, and neither is there and option. Adults say that when we become their age, it's the hardest part of life. But I think they're wrong, the teenager year of one's life is the hardest. The transition from a kid to an adult is way harder, than being already and adult, but getting different responsibilities. What you do in your teenage years will determine what you become and how you lead your life in the future.

In conclusion, I think parents put unnecessary pressure, in an already stressed out teenagers, which is very wrong. Next time you see a teen; don't be so hard on them. Think about what you went through when you were that age, and it'll be much better living condition if people realized that. But the teens themselves, know what is best for them, the way of live you choose at this age, can make you happy for the rest of your life, or make you miserable. So think about what you're going to do, and make the wise decisions when they matter the most.

There was no drug scene thirty years ago!?! That is, there was no drug scene in the 1980s? And no alcoholics apart from the town drunk? Try typing "1980s drugs" into Google.

Beyond your odd view of history, your essay needs specifics. So, for your first body paragraph, you say you can now go to amusement parks by yourself or with your friends. Why is this a good thing? For that matter, why not try a more in depth look at the benefits and drawbacks of being more independent? Likewise, for your second paragraph, teenagers see alcohol and drugs at least once a day? How so, exactly? And, if this is a bad thing, as you state, what specifically is bad about it?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that your essay needs more depth. Being a teenager is, as you correctly point out, a transition period. A teenager is no longer a child. He has more independence, which means he can go out and have fun, but he also is expected to take on more responsibility. He is old enough to be interested in adult activities, such as sex and drinking, but not considered old enough to be allowed to engage in them. At the same time, a teenager's brain is essentially part mush, as it reconfigures itself to handle new roles. This is why teenagers have such notoriously poor judgment -- the part of their brain responsible for calculating risks isn't really working correctly, and so it requires a lot more risk to make something exciting for a teenager than it would for an adult, or even a child. There is so much you could talk about, and you talk about so little. Add more, and your essay will certainly improve.

Give some more help to other members -- thoughtful, substantial help, like you might give to a younger sibling with his or her essay (more than a single sentence)!


Instead, maybe you can write: being a teenager is not all bad, though.

In conclusion, I think parents put unnecessary pressure on teenagers when they are already stressed out, which is very wrong.

This seems like something written by a teenager who does not appreciate how easy the teenage years are compared to the years of adulthood -- when you are the one putting pressure on the kids you provide for while they judge you to be going about things in a way that is very wrong.

If you could revise this to sound more like the objective response you might give 15 years from now, looking back on the teenage years, it might seem more credible.