Double Agent High Schoolers
All over the world, in high schools just like mine, yours, those of your sons and daughters—there are teen-aged students who live double lives. Students are the CSIS, the CIA of tomorrow. With all of the pressure to fit in to the meticulously-monitored normality of high school, it’s no wonder young adults feel they need to be who everyone wants them to be, not just themselves.
The struggle to find identity while attempting to fit in at school is mission impossible itself. Now, add in home, church, and any other extra-curricular activity. At school, strive to be accepted by others by fitting into their mould of what’s cool, while still being a unique individual. At home, be a little angel who always never gets in trouble, and is consistently charming, helpful, and nice to siblings. Appear innocent and knowledgeable at church, even if you’re not. Keeping up appearances in high school is a burden most adults are completely oblivious to.
Most parents are quite naive as to how difficult it is to be a teen today. On top of the entire face-to-face appearance obsession, teens of our generation have to deal with the most socially deadly weapon ever imagined in some nerd’s dark, solitary room. The computer. This silent creature lurks in most bedrooms of any adolecent enrolled in high school, waiting to strike at unsuspecting, undeserving victims. An unknown fact to most parents is that this seemingly helpful “tool” aids in the creation of lives lived by their children. Most students will use social networks to create themselves in an entirely new light; however, this can force them to seclude themselves from the life, or lives, they live that really matter.
If you don’t wear the right clothes or listen to the right music at school, you’re ostracized. Trust me—walking into Math 9, clad in green cords and a crew-neck teddy bear t-shirt is not about to make you homecoming queen. If your church friends knew all the grungy details of your weekends, they would never look at you again. High schoolers aren’t oblivious or in denial to this obvious problem—it’s just a fact of life, one they must succumb to for the rest of their teenage lives. Even now, nonconformity has become mainstream. It’s cool to be a non-conformist who disregards all of the value of being a non-conformist.
To be cool you have to try and be cool, but you can never be cool if you’re trying to be cool, because that just isn’t cool. Get me? Do you really know which of your facades is your true self? As much as I hate cliches, be honest with yourself. You don’t want some double life to follow you into the real world. A career you hate, but one that you have “to pay the bills”? A spouse you don’t love, but who has a lot of money or is someone you make a “cute couple” with? Where will it all end?
