Non-Fiction Reading Response

My reading response is on "Why You Truly Never Leave High School" by Jennifer Senior. The article talks about how the human brain changes and develops at different times of our life. The article specifically talks about how the person you are at 16 is about the same person that you are going to be the rest of your life. The article starts out by talking about a high school reunion and how at the reunion the author realized that the kids that she went to high school with, were kind-of the same people as they were when she knew them in high school. The article then continues to talk about brain development in teens and the way that the brain changes throughout their life, and how the brain will end up staying about the same throughout their life after 16. The article continues by talking about teenagers that are achieving a lot at a young age where a lot of the world is against you. The article concluded to talk about the specific people that she knew at her reunion and how the people that had not changed, and how she connected to them over Facebook.

This article really wants you to reflect on who you are as a person. A really thought provoking quote that I found in the article was: "In adolescence, the brain is buzzing with more dopamine activity than at any other time in the human life cycle, so everything an adolescent does - everything an adolescent feels- is just a little bit more intense and you can never get back to that intensity." This almost justifies teenagers being over dramatic and feeling way too intense about something that is very small thing to other people. I think that it explains to kids younger than16 that the things that they do really stick with them for the res of their life, but the article isn't about changing your life at 16 and making sure that you are the best you could possibly be. It's about who you truly are at 16 and how that affects you later in life. Your brain’s development from ages 0-3 is what scientists normally study to learn brain and development patterns but recent studies show that a 16 year olds brain development is a significant as it is ages 0-3. "For years, we had almost a religious belief that all systems developed in the same way which meant what happened from zero to three really mattered, but whatever happened thereafter was merely tweaking."

I feel like Jennifer Senior  wanted the readers older then 16 to think about who they are and how high school affected that. The article isn't biased, there wasn't a way to clearly go against it, it had the correct facts which is why it is such a good article. The article starts off with an anecdote and I think that because she started and ended with the same anecdote ( she finished the story in the end) the article tied together and you really understood what Jennifer Senior wanted everyone to think, she wanted them to think about where they are as a person and how they got there. Even though I am younger then sixteen I do feel like this article impacted my life greatly, it has made me think about what I'm doing with my life and why I'm doing the things I am.

Overall I loved this article because it connected to my life in so many different ways. I am going to high school very soon so the article made me think about who I am as a student and what I am doing with my life as a student, and it also connected to my life because so many of my moms friends talk about who they were in high school and so much of the time it matches who they are now. I am going to be sixteen sooner then I think that I am, so I believe that  I need to pick up my act and then I can really go far and do well