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To begin something new, you must sacrifice something old. To enter the real world, you must graduate your childhood.
A childhood is the delicate phase of every adolescent's life where they must mature into their own person, with their own responsibilities. Although every individual will eventually bloom with their own personality, morals, and perspectives, the education and values we learn and see along the way add to the fingers that mold. We begin when we are born, and are taken in by strangers. These priceless people show us love, and just how strong attachments can be. Family ties snare us in their loving webs and become the support network to catch us throughout our youthful falls. They are our first real pictures of people, and their actions and emotions immediately become examples.
Throughout our lives we will always find in ourselves patterns of the men and women that raised us. Next, when we are finally able to branch our innocent eyes onto larger horizons, we meet our peers, who will become our precious friends. They will hold our hands on our first days of new adventures, and wipe our tears when our delicate worlds are rocked. Some will be our friends of the moment, and some will stand by our sides, on our sports teams, on our graduations, at our weddings, and during our retirements.
While our parents help and support us while growing, our friends will grow with us. These valuable attachments are cherished and needed, and their emotional embrace will always comfort us. With these friends we enter the world of education, our basis to survive in the outside world.
We meet the teachers who will give us the instruments to join the orchestra of the world. We love them, admire them, respect them, and above all, learn from them. Forever into our future we will tell stories and reminisce of the memorable teachers and classrooms that taught us so diligently. They teach us the information to decode life, and be able to support ourselves. We excel in the subjects we love, and take this excellence into our future careers.
We valiantly struggle to do our best, and pass within the necessary limits. Some breezed by on the wings of their genius while some studied day and night to keep up with our peers. Whichever of these you were, you worked hard enough to make it here. We are watched on by these people who have seen us this far, and will be there for us farther.
Marion Winik’s “What Are Friends For?” expresses the characteristics of friendships and their importance in her existence. Winik begins by stating her theory of how some people can’t contribute as much to a friendship with their characteristic traits, while others can fulfill the friendship. She illustrates the eight friendships she has experienced, categorized as Buddies, Relative Friends, Work Friends, Faraway Friends, Former Friends, Friends You Love to Hate, Hero Friends, and New Friends. In like manner, the friendships that I have experienced agree and contradict with Winik’s categorizations.
The Pact There is not much that separates our kind from lower species of life. Our intellect, communication skills and opposable thumbs are a few of the many advantages to being a human. Human’s ability to construct a deep and rewarding lifelong friendship is no less incredible than any of the previously mentioned traits. These friendships are an integral part of our lives each and everyday, and friendships that last can certainly help lead to ones success later on in life. I have had many very close friends in my life and they all have helped me in their own way.
By definition a friend is a person who provides assistance and support. We have different groups of friends for different purposes in our lives. Although there are many different categories of friends, Marion Winik author of “What are Friends For?” mentions that some of the more common groups consist of the faraway, work, family, and former friends (132). We keep our friends because we value their loyalty, communication, support, and dependability.
My story began on a cool summer’s night twenty short years ago. From my earliest memory, I recall my father’s disdain for pursuing education. “Quit school and get a job” was his motto. My mother, in contrast, valued education, but she would never put pressure on anyone: a sixty-five was passing, and there was no motivation to do better. As a child, my uncle was my major role-model. He was a living example of how one could strive for greatness with a proper education and hard work. At this tender age of seven, I knew little about how I would achieve my goals, but I knew that education and hard work were going to be valuable. However, all of my youthful fantasies for broader horizons vanished like smoke when school began.
Over the past four years, we have grown from insecure, immature freshmen to successful, focused and confident young adults. This incredible transformation has been the result of our entire high school experience. Everything from that first homecoming game, to late night cramming, to the last dance at prom. These experiences have pulled us together as a class and we have learned to love and respect our fellow classmates.
A theme I have noticed in the book “Fish in a tree” by Lynda Mullaly Hunt is that True Friends are always there for eachother to make them feel good about themselves good. In this theme essay, you will be learning about different pieces of evidence that support this theme.
Betty Lou is right -- Our achievements of the past four years have been an honor. And so I offer my congratulations to each of you for achieving the honor that comes with high school graduation. Up to this point, high school may be the most exciting and difficult experience of our lives. We've enjoyed the carefree and happy times with WWF-style pep assemblies, dances, Junior T-P nights, and classes with friends. We've had our bad days too, though. The days when we forgot our semester project for C.I. at home, or when we couldn't stop falling asleep and Mr. Gnome made us get up to "open a window." But far worse were the times when we felt alone. We've all had days of personal crisis when we've felt rejected by those around us or alienated from them. Hopefully, we were fortunate enough to have had a friend come rescue us from isolation, but perhaps not.
Frienships in young adulthood tend to center on work and parenting activities and the sharing of confidences and advice. Some friendships are extremely intimate and supportive; others are marked by frequent conflict. Some friendships are lifelong; other are fleeting (Hatup & Stevens, 1999) ; Some ‘ best friendships’ are more stable than ties to a lover or spouse.
As you inhale the aggregate odor of your senior class for the last time, I’m sure there are many burning questions racing through your minds: “Will I find my place in the world?” If you’re lucky. “Am I really going to graduate a virgin?” Yeah, probably. “Who is that incredibly handsome young man addressing us, and how long do we have the privilege of listening to him?” Howdy, Andrew Gonzales here, and hopefully not long; I realize that your robes are making you sweat, your thongs are making you uncomfortable, and my use of the words “virgin” and “thongs” is making your parents sweaty and uncomfortable.
“Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.” (“Quotes About Companionship”). Friendships have the tendency to make one feel appreciated and well supported. Whether you realize it or not, your friends have shaped who you are today. It is important to acknowledge two types of friendships; entity and being. Writers use the theme of friendship to highlight the companionship people have in association with others in literature, which illustrates how humanity values beings.
A boy once approached Socrates with the desire to obtain wisdom. Without saying a word, Socrates led the boy down to the edge of the sea and walked in, beckoning him to follow. When they were standing waist deep in the water, Socrates pushed the boy down, completely submerging his head. He held him thus for a couple of minutes, until the boy was almost to the point of death, before letting him up. Sputtering and angry, the boy demanded to know why Socrates had held him underwater for so long. In response, Socrates asked, "when you were under the water, what did you want more than anything in the world?"
College offers a new setting in which young adults can try different activities and identities and form new interests and friendships (Oswald & Clark, 2003). Almost all college students in Oswald and Clark’s (2003) research reported finding a new ‘closest’ friend during the first month of college. Many high school students are leaving home for the first time and their friends are going in opposite directions from them. This causes a strain on these friendships they experience many changes during the first year of college. By the end of the first year, about half of high school friendships drop down to either close or casual friendships. However, maintaining a friendship might be helpful for buffering isolation and promoting adjustments to college. Strong social interaction and positive friendships aid in the adjustment to university life.
way that our friends have shaped the way that we are, is the way they
And so we find ourselves ready and eager to move on. We take with us the strength and knowledge we've gained through our interactions, encounters, challenges and accomplishments at school and at home with parents, teachers and friends. Remember life is not a race but a journey to be enjoyed each step of the way. I leave you with these words from the mountain climber John Amatt: "Adventure isn't hanging on a rope off the sides of a mountain.
In adolescence friendships normally exist within the larger social structure of peer relationships. In this larger social setting each adolescent has a particular role to play and is usually aware of their own status within the group. Close friendships are not independent of such status. Popular or successful youngsters stick together. Those who are 'in' do not mix as frequently with those on the periphery of what is acceptable to the group. Whereas the standards and styles set by the peer group can set highly influential markers around acceptable and unacceptable behaviours for young people, it is in individual friendships that young people find support and security, negotiate their emotional independence, exchange information, put beliefs and feelings into words and develop a new and different perspective of themse...