Pressure

Pressure

As a child, I've suffered through many tough decisions. I've been pressured by my peers to do the wrong thing. I've also been pressured by my peers to do positive things. Drs. George Jenkins, Sam Davis and Rameck Hunt, who are the authors of The Pact (with Lisa Frazier Page), have also been pressured by their peers to do both positive and negative things. Growing up through middle school and high school is tough because kids are always trying to get other kids to do the wrong thing. Most of the kids actually do some of the stupid things so they can fit in. I remember when I was in middle school I did almost anything to get my friends approval. Even if it meant I had to do something that was going to get me into trouble. I remember a particular event in middle school in which involved my friends and me in the middle school cafeteria.

In my middle school during lunch, we had a teacher who would walk around and observe the students to make sure that the students would not cause any trouble. We had supervised lunches in middle school because young teenage students can not be trusted without adult supervision. We had a ten minute period at the end of lunch in which nobody could say a word. If you said anything in that ten minute period, you got into serious trouble. When I was in sixth grade, my friends and I had a round table in a corner that was right next to an exit. About ten minutes before the lunch period ended, we had to be quiet and the teacher supervising would dismiss each table one by one. One afternoon, my table was not quite. The tall intimidating male teacher heard us and began to yell into our faces.

"You guys stay right there and don't think of sneaking out that door!" said the teacher.

We were so ...

... middle of paper ...

...ident. Sam Davis was always inspired by George Jenkins's determination to be a dentist. Sam asked George how he could think that he can be a dentist; George replies, "I just believe it can happen (Jenkins 97)."

Living with positive pressure is a great way to grow up for an adolescent. Kids always need an influence. If they are shown that doing something positive is cool, such as going to college to earn a degree, they will want to emulate that person. Pressuring a child to do negative things is not a great way to influence an individual. If a kid sees that stealing is the only way he can have friends, he is never going to go far in life. There are many things I regret in my life that I have done because of negative peer pressure, but there are also many things that I'm proud of because my close friends have positively pressured me to do my best at whatever I do.