High School Confidential

Asian-American teens struggle to express themselves

By Lingbo Li

	This week’s contributor, 17-year-old Somers High School senior Lingbo Li, is co-editor of her high school paper, The Tusker Times.

An easy way to rile my parents is to joke about becoming a starving artist. An author, more specifically. If they balk, I have a ready response:

“But J.K. Rowling did it,” I’ll exclaim, referring to the wildly successful author of the Harry Potter series.
If one lady can make the leap from struggling single mother to millionaire creator of a cultural icon, why not me?
The logic is impeccable.
But my joke – which is actually a serious desire – doesn’t generate much laughter.
Teasing like that doesn’t amuse many Asian parents.
High anxiety
Almost all teens feel pressure to figure out what, exactly, they are going to do with their lives.
But Asian-American teenagers, especially those – like me – from first-generation immigrant families, face specific challenges our American-born peers might find foreign.
We’re often pigeonholed by our elders to consider a narrow choice of professions.
Medicine.
Law.
Engineering.
Finance.
If you want to be a radical, contemplate accounting.
My “impractical” interests – design and creative writing – aren’t career paths that necessarily inspire parental encouragement.
But what about the young Picasso eyeing a life of creative rather than lucrative riches?
Asian parents, by and large, wouldn’t proudly phone the relatives to boast of their child’s more artistic pursuits.

You want to do what?!
Some Asian teens I talked to say their parents would ultimately support whatever made them happy, but they were often gently pointed to the virtues of becoming a doctor.
Others painted a grimmer picture.
Michelle Wu, a science-oriented senior at Somers High School, merely declared, “My parents would disown me or something if I went into the liberal arts.”
Wudan Yan, a senior at Yorktown High School, observes, “You don’t see many Asians teaching history. You see them cracking codes, finding a cure for cancer, building a business on Wall Street.”
Philip Lu, an aspiring diplomat at Lakeland High School, says, “It’s primarily an immigrant phenomenon, less so an Asian phenomenon.”

Guilt trip
Many I talked to refer to stories their parents have shared.
Amy Ahuja, a senior at Somers High School, recounts that her father always speaks of coming to America at 22, receiving admission to great schools, but without the resources to enroll.
Though her mother is encouraging her to be a writer, she notes, “You can’t just say, ‘I don’t want to go to college, I don’t be want to be a doctor.’… For Asians, that’s just not accepted. Your career is the basis of who you are.”
Angie Chung, an assistant professor with SUNY Albany’s sociology department and East Asian studies program, detailed these concerns to me in a recent e-mail exchange.
“Lots of Asian-American children do end up in these fields mainly for the same reasons their parents pushed them to do it in the first place: That is, because they feel obligated to do something back for their parents because they had made such huge sacrifices for them,” she wrote.
Some try to accommodate their parents, Chung said.
Others, she added, rebel like a typical American teen.
But, she cautions, “I would be careful, though, not to blame only the parents for this situation, but also the outside pressures and expectations they get from teachers who stereotype them as the ‘model minority,’ from other students who harass them for being nerds, and from the media that reinforces these images of Asian-Americans.”
Bleak statistics result.
Asian-American adolescent females have the highest rates of depressive symptoms and have the highest suicide rate among all women between 15 and 24 years of age, according to the American Psychological Association (APA).
In addition, the very jobs that teens are often pushed to enter have a greater risk for suicide such as “certain high-stress professions, including doctors, lawyers and psychiatrists,” according to the APA.
Ultimately, it’s a desire by the elder generation for their children to live easier, more secure lives than they did.
It’s important, however, to remember that life doesn’t travel along two extremes. The choice is not as simple as deciding between a lucrative career in medicine or spending your years as a starving artist. Being practical is important. But a life is a terrible thing to compromise.

Panas senior stresses need to chill

By Elizabeth Pashley

Walter Panas High School senior Elizabeth Pashley discusses how parents don’t realize the extent to which teens are consumed by stress and anxiety associated with academic and societal pressures. Pashley, 17, is editor-in-chief of her student paper, The Panther Post. Elizabeth, much to her dismay, can write on the subject of stress with authority: Enrolled in five AP courses, the newspaper editor is also co-president of Panas’ drama club and also spends four days a week at dance class

Adults are constantly reminding us that these are “the best years of our lives.”

Generally, I tend to agree. We’re fit. We’re young. Our whole lives stretch out before us. But when sitting at home on a Saturday night, struggling to get through the latest mountain of homework, I wonder—do adults even realize how stressful it all is?
“As students we definitely have a lot of stress put on us by school,” observed Walter Panas High School senior Emily Cich, 17. “A lot of that comes from teachers, and also from other students. You see a lot of other people taking four or five AP (Advanced Placement) courses and then you feel like you have to keep up.”

Heat is on
Academically, of course, the pressure is mostly centered on college. High school students want to get in to a good college just as much as their parents want them to. The problem arises when competing to get into the best colleges available or get that all-too-needed scholarship.
“What I see more so is internal pressure teens put on themselves,” remarked Walter Panas High School student assistance counselor Jennifer Ricci. “There is a misconception that grades ensure success, so I think students put a lot of pressure on themselves.”
Many high-achieving high school students agree.
They place pressure on themselves to do well in school because that’s the message authority figures have hammered home. If you get good grades, you go to a good college. You go to a good college, you get a good job.
And so on.
“Disappointment, in my mind, is a flat out bad feeling, so I do my best to avoid it,” began Panas senior Adam Cohen, 17.
“I also want to have a successful future, and I believe schoolwork is the key to that,” Cohen continued. “I hope that if I do well in school, I’ll go to a respected university and get a great job. I wouldn’t want to throw a chance like that away.”
One-third of U.S. teens say they feel stressed on a daily basis, reports Reuters Health. Researchers suspect American teenagers to be feeling such stress as a result of overwhelming expectations by parents and society, according to Reuters. The study, conducted at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, also found nearly two-thirds of teens to be stressed “at least once a week.”

Side of stress with your pressure?
Adults, unfortunately, lump on an extra helping of pressure.
“It’s hard for parents to watch their children make mistakes,” commented Lorraine Cich, Emily’s mother. “They give advice based on their own experiences because they want what’s best for their kids.”
Contributed Panas English teacher Fran Schulz, “Sometimes parents want to be supportive of their children and they may encourage them [to] take too many courses.”
“They want their child to sample everything, but it’s very hard to be a teenager and I think it’s very important that you balance hard work at school with fun,” she then theorized.
Make no mistake: Grades do matter.
It becomes all too apparent when applying for college that the pressure is on to stand out to admissions officers. Not only do they look at your SATs, but how many APs you’ve taken and what you’ve scored. As if that weren’t enough, they expect you to be talented, too. Music, art, sports—you name it.

Juggling act
Part of the problem is adults may not realize teenagers are trying to do too many things at once. It may seem like a good idea to take five AP courses, dance or play a sport, and try out for the school musical all at once, but it’s not—trust me, I know. Pretty soon the day is gone and there’s still homework to finish.
“I’ve actually made myself sick from lack of sleep,” Emily Cich relayed.
“It’s very hard to find a good balance between school work and other things,” she added.
Teenagers are famously moody, but stress can add on to that and it’s important for adults to be able to tell the difference.
“Sometimes their work drops, sometimes they’re physically dropping things, they come in late, they have a harried look on their face, and sometimes it’s important to just take a break, talk to them and do something positive for them,” advised Schulz, the English teacher.
“Sometimes when adults tell teenagers these are the best years of their lives, they forget how very difficult it is to be a teenager,” she then perfectly summarized.
Concluded Schulz, “We have to remember how much stress we put on teenagers, but also how much stress they put on themselves.”
So before you reprimand your child for coming home from school and vegging out in front of the TV, remember: It’s for their own well-being.
Sometimes, we just need a break.

Yorktown High senior wants her space

by Laura Treanor

	Yorktown High School senior Laura Treanor considers the appeal of MySpace.com, the hugely popular networking website that she examines in depth on these pages.

That’s it—I’m making a MySpace.
While most of my friends became addicted, I’ve held off joining the social networking website for the past two years. Everyone I knew was busy commenting on each other’s pages 24/7 and uploading pictures whenever possible, but I stuck to the traditional means of modern communication: the telephone, instant messaging, e-mail.
My initial reason for scorning the site wasn’t because of the danger involved, as most people tend to think, but out of fear that I would become a MySpace freak. I thought that the second I made a MySpace page, it would suck me right in. And I still think that if I had made one before now, I would have become a fanatic.
The few times I ventured onto the site, my hand was glued to the mouse. In fact, one day I got so engrossed that I missed an O.C. episode. I think I spent over an hour, just clicking from page to page to page of people I know.
You can imagine why I was afraid.
If MySpace could make me forget about Adam Brody, what else could it do to me?
Of course, MySpace didn’t make me glue myself to the computer for 60 minutes—it was my choice. Granted, I lost track of time. Ultimately, though, it was my free will that led me to nosily waste my time searching through the Internet identities of my peers.

Not spacing out online
Now I’m at a point where I know I can control myself. I can visit MySpace for a few minutes at a time. I know this because I did it many times during my week of research for North County News.
My research taught me a lot. After talking with friends, local parents, area lawmakers, police officers, and several other sources, my opinion of MySpace has changed drastically.
While I still cringe when I find MySpace pages crammed with risqué photos, details of drunken weekends, and cruel-spirited gossip, I consider the website a fine forum for casually chatting with friends.
Don’t get me wrong: No way am I going to mention my last name, city, state, school, or any other identifying detail on the MySpace I create. I won’t add pictures to the site, and I’m not even sure if I’ll put my first name on the page. After all, the only people I’m going to contact are friends I already have.
I am dead against meeting people over the Internet. How am I supposed to know if that kid who claims he’s a 17-year-old baseball player at a local high school isn’t really a “40-year-old virgin still living with his mom,” as my friend Alyssa so bluntly put it?
MySpace is extremely dangerous when used carelessly. Predators abound in every corner, waiting for a vulnerable teenager to victimize.
I vow to use MySpace.com safely.
As long as I talk only with people I know personally, and keep information about myself to an absolute minimum, I am confident that a MySpace page will be a fun and constructive addition to my senior year in high school.
I might even miss another episode of the O.C.
Does Adam Brody have a page?
Hmm…

Political interest fading for latest MTV generation

by Andrew Steinmetz

This week’s featured writer is Andrew Steinmetz, a 17-year-old senior at Yorktown High School. Andrew is a second-year staff writer with the high school’s student paper, The Voice, and is contemplating a career in journalism. Andrew, a volunteer with County Legislator Michael Kaplowitz’s (D/Somers) campaign for State Senate, writes this week about the apathy teens in the area display about politics.

There are nearly 39 million U.S. citizens between the ages of 15 and 25.
Eighty-nine percent of them are totally uninvolved in any part of the political process, according to a study conducted by ALOUD (Associated Leaders of Urban Debate), which is an organization designed to spark political debate in American cities.
To me, this statistic is deeply disturbing.
When you ask the teens of northern Westchester whether they are satisfied with their representation in local and national government, they are most likely going to tell you “no.”
However, to identify the source of most of their political grievances, teens need to look no further than the closest mirror.
In today’s world it is very easy for local politics to get entirely lost in the mix of a young person’s media-blitzed, information-filled life. Certainly most teens have a decent grasp on what is happening nationally, but nearly none pay any attention to the most direct form of government that we have.
Huh?
I asked 15 local high school seniors who their New York State senator and assemblyman are. One person knew of Senator Vincent Liebell (R/Patterson) and not a single person could identify Assemblyman Willis Stephens (R/Carmel).
And it doesn’t stop in high school.
The college students that once led marches and protests in Washington are now showing little interest in the political world around them.
“I mean, I don’t really care all that much,” says University of Massachusetts college freshman Jacob Chamoff, a Yorktown High School graduate. “The kids here say they deal only with administration and nobody really gets involved with the government as far as I can see.”
While parents and adults might think that it’s not really a big deal if their teenager isn’t aware of the issues present in our community, or if they don’t know all of the elected officials who are supposed to be resolving those issues, they are actually contributing to a large problem and a dangerous growing trend in American society.
Now, more than ever, America’s teenage population is deficient of the political passion that has been its trademark in years past.
Poll watch
The percentage of young people, ages 18 to 24, that show up to the polls has been steadily declining over the past 35 years, with the exception of the years 1992 and 2004, according to the University of Maryland–based organization CIRCLE (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement).
Many theories have been put forth to explain these statistics.
“Most kids just simply don’t care,” contends Yorktown High School senior Ari Cohen. “They just aren’t as interested as they are with other things. I think our student body as a whole just doesn’t appreciate the importance of our local government.”
Another notion is that teens don’t pay taxes, so they are less inclined to get involved with how government money is spent since it’s not their money.
In addition, many believe there is a real lack of proper government education in schools.
A different idea is that since there is no draft (or, at least, there isn’t one yet) as there was in the 1960s and 1970s, young adults do not feel the same urgency to get involved with politics.
Certainly, each of these factors have had an impact on the lack of youth interest in government, but there are still enough issues that are relevant to the future of our local community, and our country as a whole, for young people to be motivated to participate.
Rock the what?
Just last week I was watching the Video Music Awards on MTV and saw Al Gore hop up on stage to do his global warming shtick. While the former vice president didn’t exactly look like he belonged up there next to Queen Latifa, he delivered valid points as he addressed my generation.
Gore spoke of all the issues that the young Americans of today will have to face tomorrow, and he singled out the environment as the central issue. He called us “the generation that can and will literally save the world.”
While Gore is hopefully correct about my generation stepping up and saving the planet, we need a significant change in our attitude. So many people have fought and died, and still are fighting and dying, for our right to have a free and democratic government. The least that we can do is utilize the power that we are afforded as citizens and try to get all we can from our elected officials.
Bottom line: The more we as young people get involved, the more apt politicians are to look out for our needs.