Being Thirteen

Carly wrote this essay for her 8th grade Core class, and I thought it was better than any description I could come up with for this part of adolescence. I've reprinted it with her permission.


Being thirteen is very stressful, but can also be very fun. These days, being cool and popular is everything. Thirteen year olds have many things on their minds, like school, homework, music, sports, friends, girlfriends or boyfriends, peer pressure, responsibilities or chores, and family problems. Thirteen year olds often get headaches, stomach aches, and growth pains. Being thirteen is like switching a light on and off. Sometimes you feel great, and other times depressed and busy. It is also a really fun age because you get a lot more freedom. When you turn thirteen, you are finally considered a teenager.

For some thirteen year olds, being thirteen is all positive aspects. When you are thirteen, your parents consider you much older. They now decide to give you much more independence. For me, I get a lot of freedom. I am allowed to go many places with my friends, ride bikes, and be out in the real world. I am no longer always with my parents. It makes being thirteen pretty fun. My parents always have to know where I am, which makes me bring up technology. Cell phones, for an example, are very positive. They are positive for parents to keep in touch with their teens, and for their teens to keep in touch with them if they need help, or are in trouble. I also think that our school can be very positive toward teens with sport teams and clubs. For me, signing up for surf club, or basketball is very enjoyable for me to be with friends, but also learn and do new things. Our school has almost every sport team or club that I can think of. I think this is all very positive, because many teens’ parents can’t afford to sign them up for recreational sports. Everyone is welcome to join sports at my school.

Although it seems like being thirteen is great, for some thirteen year olds, it’s very difficult. There are many negatives about being thirteen. For me and some of my friends, we get headaches often. I also think that technology can be negative sometimes, because some teens think of their cell phones as talking to their friends. They will spend all their time text messaging their friends during school, at home, and even while adults are trying to talk to them. It can be very rude. The computer can also be negative. I think that most thirteen year olds think of the internet as myspace, or what they go on when they’re bored. Myspace and other things on the internet can turn out dangerous, because some teens post things on the internet that they shouldn’t. The internet can also be negative because you may get excluded out of many things. Girls can be so mean that you never know when they will backstab someone. I think of being a thirteen year old girl as much harder than being a thirteen year old boy, because girls can be so excluding, and just plain mean.

When I was younger, I never really thought about what it would be like to be thirteen. I always thought of thirteen year olds as “Big kids”. But being thirteen is much more complicated than that. The movies about puberty that we used to watch in school talked about how hard it is to be thirteen, but really, it’s not too hard. When I was younger, I thought that when I was thirteen I would get so much homework, but really, we don’t get too much homework. The one thing that I didn’t really think about when I was young is being popular. In elementary school, there were no popular groups, or nerd groups. Now, when you’re thirteen, there are many groups with different people. Although I didn’t think about it much, it’s for sure different than I imagined it to be.

Being thirteen seems very difficult right now, but I am hoping that in a couple years it will be easier. Being thirteen is like when a light bulb dies, you replace it with a new one, and everything is bright again.