By Isabella Casella

 

With a genre full of movies about the teen years, such as “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “American Pie” and “The Breakfast Club,” it seems like the life of teenagers are glamorized in  Hollywood. Movies like “Seventeen Again” even explore the idea of going back to enjoy the wonders of being a teenager. Whether you’re living your life as Cher from “Clueless” or as Evan from “Superbad,” here are some things our MPH teachers do NOT miss about being teenagers. (Teachers listed in alphabetical order)

 

What don’t you miss about being a teenager?

 

Albertine Cadin, French Teacher

“A lot of stuff. I do not miss peer pressure. I do not miss having teachers that aren’t very nice and just say ‘Do that, do this’ without being a little bit nice to you and trying to understand you. It’s just they have a plan and this is it, and you conform, or too bad. I didn’t like the fact that I felt pressured to go out. I felt pressured to have a boyfriend even though I didn’t want to. I wasn’t ready. That’s what I don’t miss about being a teenager.”

 

Sarah Chhablani, History Teacher

“Self- doubt, not being able to drive, (I didn’t get my license till I was nineteen), and relying on other people.”

 

Edward Curtis, History Instructor

“Almost everything. Worrying a lot about what other people think of you. That turns out to be a gigantic waste of time.”

 

Annmarie Gregory, Vocal Music (Vocal  Music Teacher)

“I don’t miss the drama. Oh my God, teenage angst and everything. Everything is so on the surface. So I don’t miss that. Everything is intense. Everything is life or death. Everything is going to be the end of the world. That sense that everything is the most important thing ever.”

 

Teresa Henderson, Art Instructor

“I don’t miss having to rely on people. Even in highschool you have to ask permission. Because there’s a constant asking of permission, your choices weren’t necessarily even your own. Even if they were your own choices you were constantly either second guessing yourself or your going behind someone’s back. Even in college you are reliant on your student loans. You have to go back home to your parents in the summer. It’s a weird step. You go from having a lot of freedom to not having that much freedom again. So I think what I don’t miss about being a teenager is that. You know, it’s all me. If I would like to stay, or to do, or to go, or whatever. I don’t have to worry about it and I have the means to do it because I work. If I felt like flying to Europe next week, I could! Probably relatively ill-advised because I still have to be back for work, but I could do it if I would like to. It opens the doors to a lot of possibilities. One of the things I don’t miss about high school is the ways people treated students and looked down on them. I don’t know if its an ageism thing. I have always looked young, and it’s a tone in conversation that is always a bit different.”

 

Patricia Bentley Hoke, English Teacher

“The terrible anxiety of when things happen to you for the first time. When you fall in love for the first time, or you have a big fight with a friend over a serious thing for the first time, or you get in trouble driving. It all seems like the end of the freakin’ world and I’m so relieved not to have that sensation anymore, that anxiety and emotional turmoil. I feel like that’s the hallmark of teenagehood and I have so much sympathy for that in my students. I love you all. I’m so glad while I’m talking to a student who’s going through something terrible to know that I never have to do that again. That’s the biggest thing, the heightened intensity of emotion that comes with being a teenager, that I don’t miss.”

 

Dalyana Guerra, Mathematics Teacher

“I want to say overall I miss being a teenager. I don’t miss the social pressures. I think as an adult people stop caring. People just are who they are and everybody accepts each other.”

 

Alexander Koziara, Stage Design

“Awkward moments where you’re not savvy enough in life to know the best way to deal with things because you haven’t had the experience, the age of wisdom.”

 

Donna Meehan, Mathematics Department Chair

“I don’t miss being a teenager at all. I had lots of fun when I was a teenager. Curfews, I guess. I don’t miss curfews, I don’t miss having to check in.”

 

William Preston, English Teacher

“The self consciousness.  I think I’m still pretty self-conscious because I’m basically an introvert but as a teenger I was very aware at all times of ways in which it wasn’t working. What didn’t look right, what didn’t feel right. There was a lot of self-consciousness as a teenager. A feeling of awkwardness, the feeling of things not being right somehow but I don’t know if that ever really leaves. Feeling less self-conscious is also just having a better sense of perspective about who you are and who other people are and not being then so stressed in unconscious ways about that. Just going: ‘“This is who I am, this is who other people are and I’m trying to understand people who maybe don’t understand me and that’s okay”’. Time gives you some of that perspective.”

 

Susan Reeve, Middle School Math Teacher

“What I don’t miss about being a teenager is all the drama. Knowing now that half the crap that was a big deal then is not really a big deal. There’s so many other issues you should be concentrating on. I don’t miss the friends that weren’t really friends.”

 

Donald Ridall, Physical Education Department Chair

“Believe it or not, I was more worried about money back then than I am now. I didn’t really have a job. Teenage years [were] was pretty low-key for me. Teenage years were just teenage years. College was better.”

 

Erica Stark, World Languages Teacher

“Bad skin. Worrying about where I was going to college and what I was going to major in. The whole dating scene and the drama involved in that. I had very strict parents, so a lot of my friends could do things I couldn’t do. So they thought it was by choice but I really wanted to drive a car and all those things that teenagers could do.”

John Stegeman, Head of Upper School

“When I was a teenager one of my biggest concerns was whether or not I had the cuffs of my pants rolled properly. I was very self-conscious about the shape of the taper, the height of the cuff and how that all was suppose to happen. I enjoy not worrying about that anymore.”

 

Matthew Vural, Science Teacher

“There’s a lot to not miss. One of the things I love about being a middle school teacher is being able to help kids navigate all that drama. To just let them know that it’s going to be fine down the road. I mean, hopefully. I mean you never say something good without saying ‘Thanks to God’ or knocking on wood. So for all of us, *Mr. Vural knocks on wood three times* it is going to be fine. I would say that drama and just being unsure, unconfident, and not knowing what’s going on. That’s really rewarding about working with kids. You see them so trapped, they think ‘his is it! They saw the stain on my shirt!’ It’s like kid, you’re not going to remember this shirt in another week. Just throw it out. They get caught up. That’s what I don’t miss.”