Cell Phone...

Over the weekend Jenn explained to me a situation that happened in study hall that I found pretty interesting. She happens to have a teacher in study hall who graduated a year before I did, and she said "do you know him? He's such an asshole!" As we continued to talk about it, she explained that cell phones are not allowed in school, however the teacher can not take it from you if they see you with it. Jenn will not leave her phone for a second, literally, and will throw a fit if her parents true to take it away from her as a form of punishment. I cannot stress enough how secretive and obsessed with her phone she is. Nonetheless, the teacher she "hates" tried to take it from her in Study Hall and she flipped out and told him "no you're not taking my phone, give it back to me I don't care if you write me up it's mine!" He wrote her up, and she never showed for the detention of course. So, her wrote her up again and she didn't show once again, and so now he wants to give her an in school suspension. She talks and acts as if he has no authority over her! She talks to him like, "no it's my phone you're not taking it"! Unbelievable, but just goes to show how important cell phones are to teens in today's society. Also, I cannot imagine talking to a teacher like that when I was in high school!

Problems..

Jenn and Jamie used to be very close friends however as I mentioned earlier they seemed to have drifted apart. I'm not sure if Jenn got caught up in a new group of friends and so left her old friends, including Jamie, or it just happened when they started meeting new people. However, since I am closer with Jenn, it's tough to meet with Jamie because I think she thinks of me as Jenn. Jenn claims to call and text Jamie all the time but Jamie never responds. I finally tracked Jamie down and asked her if I could come to her horseback riding lesson. She seemed very excited, and so I drove an hour to my parents just to go see her ride. When I arrived, I wasw still recovering from the flu and ended up falling asleep. I woke up and it was dark out and I had a bunch of missed calls from Jamie. I called her to apologize and I was very upset because not only did I drive all the way to see her, but I felt like I betrayed her. She said "kar don't worry about it, it's cold out anyway so it's better that you didn't come because you probably would've gotten more sick". I just felt so bad and it was a horrible day. I just have to hope for the best and hope it didn't ruin my relationship with her, I'm planning on going home Thursday to watch her so we will see how it goes...

Friday Night at my Apartment..

I had the flu from thursday until Sunday, and so Jenn called me Friday and said she needed to "get away" and asked if she could come and stay with me for the night. I was happy to have the company since I was sick and so we decided to order chinese and watch a movie. Her parents drove her down and picked her up saturday morning. We had a great night, and she was very comfortable with me. As for my roomates, they were expecting to see a little convict when they met her, but after the first couple of minutes they said "aww kar she doesn't loook or act like a convict she's so cute". We all got along very well that night and told stories and laughed and had a great time. Jenn was very comfortable with us and just acted like she was hanging out with her own friends. However, the next morning she got up and took a shower and was expecting her parents to pick her up and drive her and her friend to mountain creek to go snowboarding. Her parents said that was too much driving and so they refused to take her. She threw a fit, and my roomates had mentioned that if they ever talked to there parents the way she did they'd get their mouth washed out with soap. Her parents finally arrived and she left, but it made me realize that she is a totally different person with her parents then as she is with her friends. She's a great person and a lot of fun, however she doesn't treat her parents very well and expects them to do everything for her. She's just a typical teen who thinks she has a horrible life and so takes all her anger out on the people who are closest to her.

Call for Help...

I'm beginning to feel I'm a little behind with the postings but I have many notes and an extremely good relationship with both of my informants at this point, especially Jamie, who is very comfortably with me now and Jenn is beginning to open up to me. At first, my one informant, Jamie, was afraid that I would tell her parents personal situations in which she told me, now that I've opened up to her and told her many of my experiences throughout high school, and even at this point in my life, she has similiar situations and views that I do, and she she talks to me on a regular basis. For example, on Sunday she called me crying about a very emotional occurance that happened on Saturday night in which she couldn't talk to anybody else about. She was very "wasted" and proceeded to tell me that the party in which she was at, the parents were away, and there was heavy drinking going on. She ended up getting bullied by a fellow classmate, whom was a male, and was pushed into a pool, and then he proceeded to abuse her. She didn't want to be a "rat" and report it to anybody, and so she chose to keep her mouth shut and pretend it never happened. She was afraid of the reaction of her peers if she had told anybody, and also she was afraid that they would all get in trouble for underage drinking. I told her that the guy isn't worth being this upset about that just know not to get so drunk and stay away from him, and she said "Kar, you don't know what it's like to be punched by a guy it's never happened to you and so you don't know what it feels like". And she was right, I don't know what it feels like and at my age I would have called the police right away! However, if I was a junior in high school, and the guy who did it was a big football player, I honestly probably wouldn't have. It made me feel helpless for her to tell me this information because there was nothing I could do about it. She said repeatedly that she didn't do anything to trigger his explosion, and that he was just going through a rough time in his life and that's probably how he reacted when he mixed his anger with alcohol. Now, a few days have gone by and at first everybody was talking about it but she said it's slowly becoming the pas, which she's happy about.

Jenn, my other informant seems to be handling her school, work, and horseback riding much better. She's a very busy girl, and so I don't have much time to talk or meet with her, but when we do talk she gives me her basic information, not too personal yet, but I'm working on it. She talks about the thrill of just being able to drive to school in the morning! She's had her liscence for a little over a year now, but she said that is what she looks foward to everyday when she goes to school. She hasn't had a boyfriend yet, but she has had some crushes. When I talk to her, I feel like I am talking with an adult. She has so many ambitions and goals, and it seems that she is total opposite of Jamie. However, when I meet with them all together, Jenn seems to have the same personality as Jamie. They talk about boys, and "oh my god did you see what so and so was wearing today", and gossip, etc. They both have every pair of uggz there is just in different colors, and they have the same fashion style which is Abercrombie, Hollister, etc. Both of their myspace pages seem to have the same design, besides Jenn's is more quotes and backgrounds, while Jamie's is made up of pictures of her and her friends. I'm really enjoying this research and have a good time talking and hanging out with them! Although, when Jenn is with her other friends, she'll only text me and when I call her she'll answer and say "i gotta go ill call you later" and hangs up, which is odd to me, but I will find out why she does that and why she's so personal about some situations.

Drugs and Working Issues...

I was amazed at how much had happened in the second week of my research. First we will begin with Jamie, whom has major anxiety with her public speaking. I believe she's extremely insecure, but that's beyond the point. After her experience with stealing merchandise, the detective let her off pretty easy as long as she doesn't have anymore bad reports. Considering she's under the age of 18, he explained that she pretty much just had to return it all, and if she was older than 18 she would have been put in jail. I believe the intent of the detective was to intimidate and scare her, which is exactly what happened. I honestly do not believe she will every steal a penny from anywhere again! Back to her anxiety, she is prescribed to a pretty high dose of anxiety medicine which she takes only before speaches or when she's feeling anxious. This past week, her whole bottle was stolen out of her purse. After the whole stealing issue, her parents were unsure whether to believe they were stolen or she had stole them. However, her mother took it into her own hands and went to her daughter (Jamie's) friends mother, and explained the situation. Right away, the other mother grabbed a bottle of pills that had Jamie's name on them that were found in Jamie's "friends" room. Her mother explained that her daughter had been acting odd for the past couple of days and so went through her bag and found them. Jamie seemed to be honest and firm about the pills and very upset about the situation. From my first weeks research, I did believe that she is trying very hard to fit in, but the way she explains the situations to me, it seems to be the opposite. I will have to research much more on her to find out what is really going on in her mind.

As for Jenn, her week seemed pretty normal. I'm afraid that she is confused about what's important in her life not socially, but preoccupied with her job rather than her school work. Like I said, she is an extremely intelligent girl but is becoming maybe a little too conserned with her job at the moment. While talking with her multiple times, her job seemed to be very overwhelming and bringing down her school grades. Normally a straight A student, is beginning to get C's because it's hard for her to balance her hobby, horse back riding, her job, and her school work. She is a waitress at an senior citizen community, and it's hard for her to struggle trying to fit it all in. Her boss seems to think that this job is a career, and won't understand that she needs less hours to fit everything in. She was extremely upset Monday and Thursday because her customers were very rude and she ended up spilling tomato soup and grape juice all over, which was embarassing as well. I'm trying to help her understand that the job she has is just temperary and it's nothing to get too overwhelmed with, and that school work is much more important. Next week I hope both their weeks get better and they begin to understand what's really important for their future.

Week 1

I began my research with two adolescent females from my home town, Medford, N.J. One which to be a closer relative, and the other to be a female whom I used to babysit. Both are 16 years old and go to the same high school. they had always been good friends however recently, they began to become more distant than they have in the past. My project is to become close to each female and understand junior's in high school today, and compare it to my past. So far, I think that one of the females, whom I won't give their identification, is much concerned with her social life and what other people think of her. I will call her Jamie, and she seems to have drifted away from what's important to her and moved on to people and things that shouldn't mean anything to her in the long run. I found out she was just caught stealing with two of her "new" friends from an expensive clothing store, and over $500 of merchandise between the three of them. It bothers me that she seems to be trying to fit it way too much, because she has the type of parents that would buy her anything in a heart beat because of how much they love and care about her. The other female, whom I'll refer to as Jenn, has taken the opposite path and knows what she wants in life. She is a very intelligent female who knows what's important in life and knows what she loves to do, no matter what anybody thinks of her. Her passion is horse back riding, which she believes she will always do. She is extremely independent and relies on herself and herself only. I hope during my research I will be able to help Jamie realize what is important in life based on my high school experience, which wasn't too long ago.