"The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager" -Thomas Hine

Some quotes I found to be insightful from the reading:

"...teenagers' priciple occupation is to adapt, to find a place in life"

This sums up an unconcious desire that many teenagers are on a quest for. I can only speak from personal opinion and observation, but it does seem to be that teenagers are constantly struggling to fit in wherever they can. Sometimes its with the wrong crowd, sometimes its with people who share a similar hobby, and sometimes its with someone whom the teen lusts becasue of a socially acceptable quality (the cool guy, the pretty girl, the jock..ect) , and the teen wants to be "just like them", because they are socially accepted.  Perhaps, as Hine's emphasizes, this is why teenagers seem to be so mysterious, unstable, unpredictable, and just plain bizarre. Its becasue they are constantly evolving, and constantly sampling new environments and behaviors to see what works best for them, and to see where they feel the most accepted. A lot of time as a teenager is spent worrying about what others think of you. Less is spent on worrying what you think of yourself; this comes later in life. 

"... all of us have been teenagers, and we ought to be experts on how teenagers tink. Oddly, few people can actually remember the experience."

I really liked this part of the reading. It made me stop and remeber what it was like for me as a teenager. I find that as the years go by, the memories (with some exceptions) become more distant and less explicit; the feelings and emotions they used to generate are slowly fading. The experiences (and feelings/cognitions/emotions linked to them) that were once novel and exciting are now becoming more routine or familiar, and, in a way, take a little something from the original memories. The fact that Hine states that his book began when he was a teenager made me really think about how much change has happened for me since then, and I can only imagine the changes that will take place once decades start going by.