RUNNING HEAD: Adolescent

Adolescent Experiences
Shelby Schroeder
11/2/2014
SW 3510
Wayne State

Adolescent

Abstract
Being confused during adolescence is a very common experience for
everyone. All of these experiences will make us who we are when we enter
adulthood. Some of these experiences include our sexuality, drugs, peer
pressure, body image, and family. I will talk about my personal experiences
with these categories.

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Growing up something every single one of us has experienced. For

most of us it makes us well rounded members of society; while others may
need help. We all have different experiences that make us who we are. Some
of the events we go through are positive and others are negative, but it
makes us individuals. As social workers, these events often mold our values
and ethics that we will use in the field. The way our families work or the ways
we were raised has a big effect on us. Personally, I am very close t my family.
It is the center of my life, whether it is my own family or my boyfriends
family. Therefor I am very family oriented and want to work with families
once I have my degree. I have just had some events that made me want to
be around my family more than my friends sometimes.
One major event in my lifetime that has made me more family oriented
is when my grandma died. I had always been very close to my grandma
Makowski for as long as I can remember. I would spend at least one weekend
a month with her at her house after my grandpa died, just to help her out
around her house. When I was very young she was the one that watched
after me and spent a lot of her extra time with me. I believe the attachment
theory had something to do with how close we were just because she would
always make sure I was happy throughout my entire childhood. My grandma
had always been sick also. She had heart disease since she was in her 30s;
she also had a small heart and lungs because she had polio as a small child. I
remember that she had been in and out of the hospital all the time because
of heart problems. This is why she needed more help with her house both

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before and after my grandpa got sick and died. We made sure she got the
help she needed and would check in with her every day. Two weeks before
she died I got to spend a weekend with her while my parents took my brother
to a soccer tournament. This weekend is now one of my best memories
before she died.
On July 6th 2010, I was sitting at home waiting to be picked up by my
friend for our tennis lesson when the Richmond police called and asked to
talk to my mom or dad. After I had given them my dads phone number I got
a call from him. He told me I needed to come straight home after my tennis
lesson and that they would be running late, but were not sure how late. At
first I honestly thought I had gotten caught doing something I had done a few
days before so I was more worried about that than anything. Once I got
home my parents had me sit down on the couch and I can still hear them
saying, Grandma died today, her neighbor found her in the garage.
She had tried to go out and get the garbage cans when something
went wrong. She had made it back to the garage before she collapsed into
her car and died. The autopsy showed that she had a major heart attack, and
even if someone would have called an ambulance the chances of her
surviving were very slim. The next few months were a blur that I barely
remember. Everything happened so fast between cleaning and selling her
house and starting my junior year of high school. At that point I never really
had anytime to grieve, so even now it still hits me that she is really gone.

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One thing that has helped me is the fact that I actually own her car. I am
constantly made fun of for driving an old lady car, but I love my little tan
Malibu because it was my grandmas. Once I do end up getting a new car I
will be taking my guardian angel that hangs from my mirror. Something tells
me that she is somehow watching over me through that little charm. It
always makes me feel better just to look at it, but I know it will hurt again
when I decide to sell my car. This was honestly that only major life event that
sticks out to me and that had a major impact on my life, but I have had a lot
of smaller life events that have given me my personality of who I am today.
One event that has made me who I am is when I discovered boys. I can
remember being in second grade and thinking Oooh he is really cute! but I
never thought of them in any other way than friends at that point, but once I
reached seventh grade it was a completely different story. I knew by that
point that I was indeed straight. I constantly had a crush on a different boy in
every grade. My very first relationship was with my neighbor, Sean, at age
13. He was nice, but he did not live there all the time since his parents were
divorced. Our relationship was very relaxed and was not really a relationship
at all. Thinking back all we ever did was hangout in his basement and play
Grand Theft Auto for hours. I think we only kissed one time, but it was weird
since we were more friends than anything. Needless to say, that relationship
did not go anywhere at all.

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After Sean I did not really date for a few years. I would hang out with
guys and go out on dates, but never had a serious relationship. I just was
never interested in dating in high school until the end of my junior year. To
explain this strange situation I have to go back to my freshman year when I
met my now fianc, James. He moved to my school at the beginning of high
school and I honestly never thought of him as boyfriend material. He was the
biggest jerk I have ever met at that point since he was constantly making fun
of me for being so short, since I am 53 and he is 61. At one point
sophomore year we became best friends and talked constantly. He had a girl
friend and I respected that and helped him out with their relationship. When
they finally broke up, we began changing our relationship; four years later I
am happy to say that I will be marrying my best friend once I am done with
my degree. I had always known I was going to be straight and this proves it
to me, but I am also secure enough in my sexuality that I can look at woman
like Scarlet Johansson and say Yep she is hot, but not be attracted to her.
Something that never really affected me was drug use. For the most
part, growing up I stayed away from the kids that were involved in drugs. The
one time I did smoke marijuana I hated it. I knew it was not something I
wanted to get into, so while most kids were off at parties drinking and
getting high, my friends and I stayed in and usually watched the Harry Potter
movies 1000 times. There was a small group of people I did hangout with
that would try to pressure me into doing drugs with them, but I did very well
with handling the peer pressure. I would go and hangout with them, but I

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never did drugs. I was more of the person who would make sure they would
make it home safely, which to this day they all appreciate a lot.
Something I actually did really struggle with when I was younger was
my body image. I never felt comfortable as myself. I had always been a
bigger girl; most girls in my family are. In middle school many of the girls
started to lose what we were told was baby fat, but I never did. Because of
this I because very negative about how I looked and how I felt. Even my own
friends would make fun of me because I was just naturally a fuller person. I
was told I would never find a guy or any permanent friends. That was all in
just middle school, but high school was worse. One of the reasons I did not
want to date in high school was because I did not have the confidence to try.
Even to this day I still have some days where I do not like how I look, but I
now know it is just how I am naturally and I cannot change it.
One thing that did help me get through all of these issues was my
family. My family is the stereo typically household. Two parents, two kids, and
a dog. Growing up I thought this was the normal thing to have and thought
every house had both parents. All of my friends were set up this way until I
met my friend, Candice. Her house was set up differently; she had only her
mom and her two siblings. Her dad had been in jail since she was very young
so she did not know him. It was a large shock to learn that this was the way a
lot of kids I went to school with lived. It was not something kids talked about
so we all kind of assumed every house was the same as our own. I am

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grateful that I had both of my parents while I was growing up. They
supported everything I wanted to try and have given me a great foundation
for me to start my own life.
Pretty much the only form of diversity my school had was the different
types of household we lived in. I come from a farm town so naturally we were
all very similar. All of our families were either super rich or living on the river
in the huge houses, or middle class families who owned a farm or commuted
a long distance to work. In school everyone was the same. We still had the
different groups that kids would hang out in, but they were still based off of
economic status. With this being said, I never had any real experience with
diversity until I started school at Wayne State this year. I appreciate the
different cultures we have learned about so far and have been using it in my
own work at a hospital so I know what is acceptable to a patient.
All of these things were also affected by the different theories that we
have learned about. When I first became aware of my sexuality it was during
Freuds psychodynamic theory of puberty. Freud said that in this stage
humans become sexually aware of what they want and need to achieve it
(Ashford, LeCroy, & Lortie, 2013, p. xx). Another theory that effected the way
I grew up was conflict theory. This theory states that the difference in some
people is the difference in the way our material objects are distributed
(Ashford, LeCroy, & Lortie, 2013, p. xx). This explains why the diversity in my
schools were based off of economics. The kids that had all the newest and

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best stuff would hang out together, while the kids with less would often
group together.
Adolescence is a very confusing time for a lot of people. We go through
a lot of changes and start to try to discover who we are. All of these different
issues make growing up really difficult. We learn how to manage everything
and hopefully become respectable young adults.

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References
Ashford, J. B., LeCroy, C. W., & Lortie, K. L. (2013). The Psychological
Dimension. In Human behavior in the social environment: A
multidimensional perspective (5th ed., p. 98). Belmont, CA:
Brooks/Cole/Thomson Learning.
Ashford, J. B., LeCroy, C. W., & Lortie, K. L. (2013). The Social Dimension. In
Human behavior in the social environment: A multidimensional
perspective (5th ed., p. 147). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole/Thomson
Learning.