Coming Of Age

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Michel Sato Kimberly Widenhouse English II Honors 4 March 2024 Coming of Age: The Growth from Naivety to Maturity The transition from adolescence to adulthood is characterized by boundary-pushing and risk-taking behavior when facing challenges and dealing with the responsibilities of growing up. To come of age means to mature, learn, and grow from an experience or many experiences throughout one’s adolescence. A coming-of-age experience could be asking a crush out, traveling, breaking up with someone, or trying something new; such as a difficult task. I have personally had my fair share of encounters with difficult and life-altering choices where I had to take a risk that ended up changing my behavior and mindset. One such encounter was with …show more content…
I tapped her on the shoulder, asked for her phone number, wrote it down, and went on my way. However, the one thing I did not stop thinking about was if everything would go right. That was something I should’ve prepared myself for because she stopped talking to me about a week later. Unfortunately, this hurt me for a while, and it could’ve been better received if only I had wished for the best, and prepared myself for the worst, rather than wishing for the best and planning for the best. The point of this anecdote was to show that the only way for me to learn this lesson was by taking the risk and experiencing it myself. If I had not experienced this, I wouldn’t have learned that important lesson. Learning from experience alone can be seen in “Safety of Numbers” by Lucy Tan, which is written from the perspective of the narrator, a teenage girl dealing with a controlling mother during her preparation for the SAT exam. Throughout this story, the narrator’s mother keeps her from having fun with friends by making her study extensively. This leads to the narrator sneaking out with her friend Cat one night. At the climax of the story, the narrator and her friend Cat sneak away and ditch town after the narrator completes her SAT …show more content…
Fortunately, he perseveres onwards and finally passes through the exit of the tunnel. Afterward, he saw the boys playing in the water about a half mile away and the narrator describes his feelings as “He did not want them”. He wanted nothing but to get back home and lie down” (Lessing 40). Jerry is not the same boy he was before he went through the tunnel. Before, he wanted to prove that he could do it to impress the boys who also did it, but in the end, he realized that he did not care for the boys, and he was proud of himself for completing the task. This quote shows Jerry’s change in maturity after he finished the task by revealing his newly acquired sense of independence. Jerry is similar to the narrator from “Safety of Numbers” because they both desire and strive for independence, which they both achieve through being adventurous. My anecdotes, “Safety of Numbers”, and “Through the Tunnel” are connected by the risk-taking and lesson learning characteristics that are crucial to the process of coming of age. The subjects of these stories all encounter a risk, a risk that they need to take to grow and mature as a
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