A young persons growth into maturity

bildungsroman

bildungsromanA young persons growth into maturity

This is a documentary style journal about the physical and emotional journeys we take from childhood to adolescence. This book focuses particularly on the experiences and atmospheres associated with the different stages of youth, and, how the longing for freedom can be found and lost with the growth into maturity. A specific experience studied in this book is that of a young persons first trip alone on a bus.

Words and quotations taken from ‘The Catcher and the Rye’ as well as numerous journals and essays on the behavioral patterns of children and adolescents.

Photography, illustration and design by Sarah Corcoran

Overview

bildungsromanA young persons growth into maturity

Little is known about how and why children’s preferences for different places change as they get older. Developmental shifts in the place preferences of children shows a preliminary examination of developmental shifts in these place preferences.

Younger children tended to choose places valued for a particular land use, while older children tended to choose places for their aesthetic or cognitive qualities.

Adolescence is usually accompanied by an increased independence allowed by the parents or legal guardians and less supervision, contrary to the preadolescent stage.

According to Erikson’s psychosocial model of development, identity must be perceived by the individual, but also recognized and confirmed by others. Thus, the process of establishing an identity involves

integrating into a coherent whole one’s past experiences, ongoing personal changes, and society’s demands and expectations for one’s future. (Sprinthall & Collins, 1984).

Identity is a dynamic, not static psychological structure. The formation of identity in adolescence sets the stage for continual changes in the content of identity through the adult years. Identity could be viewed as a structure of beliefs, abilities and past experiences regarding the self. “The better developed this structure is, the more individuals appear to be of their own...strengths and weaknesses.... The less developed this structure is, the more confused individuals seem to be about their own distinctiveness from others and the more they have to rely on external sources to evaluate themselves.”

The transition from adolescence to young adulthood, and the accompanying changes in context, have the potential to influence leisure behaviour. Leisure researchers have not developed an adequate understanding of the nature of change and stability in leisure behaviour across this major life transition.

I don’t even know what I was running for. I guess I just felt like it.

The objective of a study on adolescents’ favourite places and environmental self-regulation was to give credence to the argument that favourite places are used as a means of regulating unpleasant and pleasant feelings, the coherence of self-experience, and self-esteem. Students, 17 and 18 years of age, wrote essays about their favourite place, describing the situational and/or emotional context for seeking out a favourite place and the experiences they had there. They emphasized the importance of the place itself rather than social experiences or recreational facilities.

Favourite places are used as a means of regulating unpleasant and pleasant feelings, the coherence of self-experience and self-esteem.Internal thoughts and feelings, external stimuli and social conflicts that threatened self-esteem and the coherence of self-experience were the reasons given for going to a favourite place. Since these rationales led to experiences emphasizing the avoidance of pain and threats to self, and to the effort to maintain self-esteem and produce coherence to one’s self-experience, the interpretation of these experiences as environmental self-regulation is more warranted than previously.

However, this observation is still based on retrospective self-reports alone. Positive and supportive experiences also preceded the visit to the favourite place. Positive experiences may just be prolonged in a favourite place or they may create incoherence in self experience, thus necessitating introspection in a favourite place.

the need for places of social interaction, and for places of retreat.

Gibson’s theory of affordances offers environmental psychology a method of examining the functional significance of environments for adolescents. The affordances measured related to two developmental needs in adolescence,

Five hundred and thirty-nine adolescents aged between 11 and 16 years rated the number of places available for 34 different affordances in each of the environments. The neighbourhood, school and town centre all supported both social interaction and retreat behaviours. The home environment did not support social interaction behaviours.

Among other things you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Some men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them have kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful recipricol arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.

that I have changed each time I return.It troubles me

disappearing

anything

Transience means passing with time or is the state of being brief and short-lived. Something which has the property of transience is said to be transient, or often simply a transient or transient state.

It was that kind of crazy afternoon, terrifically cold and no sun out or and you felt like you were every time you crossed a road.

superficiality

phoeniness

virtue

innocence

In the past, and in some societies today, such a change is associated with the age of sexual maturity (mid-adolescence); in others, it is associated with an age of religious responsibility. Particularly in western societies, modern legal conventions which stipulate points in late adolescence or early adulthood (most commonly 17, 18 and 21, at which time adolescents are generally no longer considered minors and are granted the full rights of an adult) are the focus of the transition. In either case, many cultures retain ceremonies to confirm the coming of age, and significant benefits come with the change.

through the undertaking of responsibility, or by learning a lesson.

The age at which a young person’s transition from childhood to adulthood takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies.

The child has developed in some way,

Adolescent territories emerged as a result of concentrated usage of some places by adolescents. It has been revealed that distinct concentrations of adolescents in places which adopted ‘dynamic’ rather than static displays.

These places allowed them room for personal expression. This cognition of particular places as having a distinctive personal ‘feel’ seems to contribute, along with frequent usage, to the development of adolescent territories.

They lived in a microcosm of infinite detail and petty concern

The fear of what could happen to a person should they become confined to an area includes suffocation and believing that there may be a lack of air in the area to which they are confined. However,

most people do everything in their power to avoid these situations.

He was admired for walking in the street rather than on the sidewalk.

The whole place was getting too small I quite simply had to

get out.

What I was really hanging around for,

I was trying to feel some kind of a

I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.

good-bye.

The end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood varies by country and by function, and furthermore even within a single nation-state or culture there can be different ages at which an individual is considered to be (chronologically and legally) mature enough to be entrusted by society with certain tasks.

Travelling meaninglessly, going nowhere in particular, unoccupied, unguided.

In the course of recent changes to the context and content of youth transitions, young people’s move into independent membership of society is ever more discussed. These discussions encompass a range of complex themes including competency, responsibility and active community participation. As well as this, the consideration of how young people’s need for space,

and their emergent sense of place, are aspects of an identity which young people ‘learn’, work at and negotiate over in their leisure time.

Against a backdrop of widespread panic about children’s safety and the unruliness of teenagers

efforts to remove young people from public space are becoming increasinglypervasive.

Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be

you.

The whole arrangement’s designed for those who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with...

... so they gave up looking.

... so they gave up looking.