Inspiration from Libba Bray

The following comes from a recent blog post by YA author Libba Bray. It was written in response to a teen girl with a life-choice dilemma: Do what she wants with her life, or do what will make the adults in her life happy. I applaud Libba (and it's not the first time) for writing this and for sharing it with the world. I WISH someone had told me this when I was a teen.

Teens, what *you* should be doing.

"Listening to music. Eating pizza before your metabolism goes to hell. Dancing. Spending a Friday night with your friends at the local playground having conversations about life, liberty, love, and Lady Gaga while sitting on a merry-go-round. Reading great books. Reading trashy books. Inventing personas. Trying on identities. Learning to drive. Going to concerts and games. Playing sports. Disdaining all of the above. Creating random Facebook pages filled with quotes you love one day and find hopelessly déclassé the next. Making art. Examining your hair for split ends. You should have the luxury of occasional boredom so you know what it feels like and so you know how to respond to its inspiration. You should not be so overscheduled and exhausted. Teenagers are not supposed to be mini-adults or over-achieving automatons. There is supposed to be a long on-ramp to adulthood."

2 comments:

Shannon O'Donnell said...

Thanks for the link! So many of my high school students are working and paying their own ways. When did kids stop being kids?

Lacey J Edwards said...

How about it, Shannon. My niece is 15 and between school, cheer leading, and her job at McDonald's, I don't know how the girl has time to breathe.

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