Symptoms of Being a Teenager

You get bored easily and surf the net filling your time with garbage; the contaminated time seeps into your bloodstream and you feel infected with idleness. Hunched over the computer you plug yourself to music and chew gum. You blow bubbles and try to make yourself forget that you have to study for your blasted trigonometry test.

You always binge on junk food and yet constantly long for homemade meals; sometimes you feel nothing will be enough to satiate you. It’s worse when you’re with your friends and you eat popcorn in front of TV. Something about those salty crumbs makes you blurt things you do not mean; criticize someone you don’t really judge, state an opinion you’re not sure about…Something about those salty crumbs, or maybe that glowing screen. You try to make yourself not to think that maybe its something about you.


You look in the mirror and search for somebody else. Sometimes other’s words weigh more than your thoughts, but your head feels heavy anyways.

Sometimes you feel permeated by God himself and that you can make the whole world explode; but other times you feel you won’t be able to move a speck of dirt no matter how hard you pushed.

You do foolish things although you know the consequences. You are a mystery to your parents and yet the only person you can relate to is Peter Pan.

You go to bed and dream bizarre scenarios; and when you wake up you try to make yourself forget them.

Hey there teenager, please stop forcing yourself to forget or ignore things.
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I can't say I'm proud of this, but I like the idea. Any suggestions on improving this are very welcomed :3

Hey! You're quite new here, I see, so I guess this review comes with a Please Don't Take This Too Harshly disclaimer. I won't nitpick through this grammatically because it's so short, and I don't want to rip it apart for minor punctuation tweaking, considering I'm also in favour of the idea. I like the title in particular, and several of the details here are so true.

Yay for second person! You don't see it often (because it's quite difficult to write in, I think), but you mostly pull it off without being patronising.

The problem with writing an age-specific piece is that your language has to be appropriate, and in combining it with a very short piece, you've necessitated a fluidity in the writing to keep the reader's interest. The piece also raises a lot of questions, which it doesn't attempt to answer or provide an opinion on. I'll deal with those points one by one. Much of this concerns writing naturally when appropriate, and showing off your language within that context.

Appropriate Language

In this piece, there's a definite relationship between the teenage persona coming across in the piece and the reader, but occasionally, you override it as the author. I'll give an example (because I'm aware of how little sense that made).

You look in the mirror and search for somebody else.

This is my favourite line. I relate to it and I can see a character developing through it, with the typical self-esteem issues of a teenager. It's effortless and without devices, but it's immediately relatable.

You get bored easily and surf the net filling your time with garbage; the contaminated time seeps into your bloodstream and you feel infected with idleness.

Aside from the fact that I'm not sure it's advisable to use your opening sentence to describe boredom, the phrase "infected with idleness", mostly because of the alliteration, immediately seems to come from an author, not the teenager expressing emotions. Though I like the metaphor of "contaminated" and "infection", it's strange next to the colloquial use of "garbage" and "surf the net", and I'd even question the use of the semi-colon because these sentences seem so much at odds with each other. I would cut "with idleness", and mess around with the opening. Introduce the following sentence instead of overshadowing it.

There's also the occasional word that doesn't seem to fit.

You blow bubbles and try to make yourself forget that you have to study for your blasted trigonometry test.

Why "blasted"? Again, it feels like a conscious decision by the author to avoid swearing, which is totally fine (and probably right, since I don't think it'd fit), but it still seems out of place with the more sophisticated constructions. I'd replace it with "next week's", just to keep the flow of the sentence intact.

You go to bed and dream bizarre scenarios;

Again, the phrase "bizarre scenarios" doesn't quite fit and doesn't sound natural. I put a big emphasis on sounding natural in most of my reviews, but it's so important here because of your subject matter, and your audience. If you don't sound like a teenager, writing about being a teenager, your teenage audience might not sympathise as much.

Fluidity

Okay, here's where the punctuation gets involved. You use a lot of short statements, and do vary the sentence structure, but occasionally a comma would help or an apostrophe is misplaced. Dismissing that momentarily, let's just focus on your theme. You're concerned with the fact that teenagers make themselves forget as the world goes by. The awkwardness of "making oneself forget" is enough to contend with, but sometimes the constructions get in the way.

You try to make yourself not to think that maybe its something about you.

This is jerky to read, though I know immediately what you mean. Try:

You try not to think that maybe it's something about you.

It's more concise and it flows better, but it still says the same thing. It's also got that tone that creeps into your writing occasionally, and makes it so much easier for me to consider what you're saying; it's knowing that you're writing as a teenager. It's still the same point, so it's not as if you're dropping your repeated phrase, but it's so much lighter to read.

Sometimes other’s others' words weigh more than your own thoughts, but your head feels heavy anyways.

Here, the "anyways" offsets the rest of the sentence and makes it flippant. Cut it. You could also use "the words of others" rather than "others' words". I've added some other ideas for clarity in bold.

Hey there teenager, please stop forcing yourself to forget or ignore things.

I'm in two minds about the effectiveness of the shout-out to the reader, but as you've been in second person the whole time, I guess I can't comment really. However, "things", and the construction of this sentence, really don't pack the punch you seem to be going for. Try, "try to make yourself remember". Or something less bulky. Definitely cut the "or ignore things", if you want to go with your original sentence here.

Questions and Answers

Sometimes, your ideas don't really come across and seem a bit vague. I know the feeling! I always have that problem when writing; I come up with a phrase that sounds good, I write it down and it does sound good, but it makes very little sense on closer examination. Your comparisons tend to make more sense than mine do, but there were a couple - now I'm really getting nitpicky - that I felt didn't really get enough attention.

You are a mystery to your parents and yet the only person you can relate to is Peter Pan.

I'm not sure why this warrants an "and yet". Why does relating to Peter Pan have anything to do with parents? Because he needed mothering? It just seems that most people associate Peter Pan with youth independent of adults, and yet you connect the two. This might just be me being dense.

It’s worse when you’re with your friends and you eat popcorn in front of TV. Something about those salty crumbs makes you blurt things you do not mean; criticize someone you don’t really judge, state an opinion you’re not sure about…Something about those salty crumbs, or maybe that glowing screen.

Again, this is nitpicky, but these sentences have the unfortunate effect of making me think that the popcorn is having some additive-related effect on you. I know you're suggesting that this teenager blames anything but herself for her judgemental ideas, but it genuinely seems as if you're attributing the blame to the popcorn and expecting the reader to agree. The last sentence alleviates it somewhat, but why don't you mix up the paragraph a bit with a rhetorical question? "Is it those salty crumbs that make you blurt things you do not mean, criticise someone you don't really judge, state an opinion you're not sure about? Something..." etc.




That's it from me, anyway! I actually think this is the closest I've seen anyone come to describing "being a teenager" for a long time, especially in such a short piece, so don't take my nitpicking too harshly. I hope that helps with improvements!

- Jet.

Hiya. Well, first of, I liked this. It was pretty relatable and down to earth. I enjoyed reading it, and I also think you could go a bit further with it. Maybe take that starting and make a character and have him/her go through being a teenager. I think you'd be able to capture it well. Just an idea
Anyway, I agree with the nitpicks above, so I see no reason in listing them again. I must admit though I was pretty confused with the whole popcorn thing. It's a short piece, and you went pretty far talking about the popcorn. I think you were getting at that a teenager will blame anything willing to take blame for their problems, but to me it wasn't to clear, and also a bit repetitive. I mean, when I think of blaming things, I think of yelling at people for no apparent reason, I think of breaking and smashing things and yelling at objects, then just break-down crying, not so much...Popcorn. I don't know, I was just a bit confused, and I might suggest clearing this up? I epically liked the "You look in the mirror and search for somebody else" It seemed really true
Anyways, I liked the piece. Very relatable. If you ever decide to go anywhere with it, I'd love to read it!

i really liked this actually it made a lot of sense and i could really relate to it!most teenagers could cause at this time in our lives we truly barely relate to anyone except maybe our friends. it'great i loved it!

I loved this story! It captures the desperation and dreamer state of the teenage situation! Excellent! Only thing I found is that "anyways" is not a word, but "anyway" is. Modern language error! It's made all the time, so don't feel badly! Fantastic piece though!

Hi there. Good job on this story.

I think most people on this site are teens and they could relate to this. All i could say is that at the start you jump right into the "story," and there's no background for this boy.

Also, the popcorn's saltiness. It seems to me if it's all the popcorn's fault for making this boy say things that he doesn't mean. So i agree with Jetpack on that. Re-word that paragraph.

~ T.K

I really liked this. It was interesting and really relatable and a different perspective, I think. I liked how it's in 2nd person, because it just made the connection easier.

A few things I might change are:

1. Maybe put a few more specifics in. I liked the popcorn, making you say things, because that puts a very real image in my mind, but maybe add what particular show was on, or other little things. The more specific the more real it becomes. And even though it's in 2nd person, the narrator is still a specific person, so the details matter.

2. The last line. The entire thing is beautiful, and well written and powerful, but the last line (for me, at least) is just kind of there. It's not bad, and I like how it starts with "Hey there teenager" but the end is just kind of duller than the rest of the peice. And the last line is what people will remember the peice by, it's the last thought. Put a more definite thought there, maybe, like what the purpose was of reading this. Maybe it's just that I have a thing for strong conclusions.

Yeah, only two things. Other than that, this was really amazing. Fantastic job.