When you’re young, every time you mess up, you hear something along the lines of “You’re only fourteen,” “You’re only sixteen,” “You’re only nineteen,” or the ever-present “The prefrontal cortex doesn’t fully develop until twenty-five.” Being young is an excuse, to some degree, and adults often emphasize this when you’re in the middle of it all, especially when you’re a student at Phillips Academy, trying to grapple with the turmoil that is growing up. As much as adolescence is said to be a time to make mistakes, it is simultaneously treated as the most crucial stage of one’s life. There are so many high-stakes decisions you are expected to make when you’re an adolescent, often with lifelong consequences. Yet you’re also constantly reminded not to worry, that it’s okay to fail, and that you have all the time in the world in your hands. This creates a kind of cognitive dissonance — teenagers are both assured that failure is alright and expected to perform highly at the same time. This paradox of being forgiven and held to a high standard simultaneously — and can contribute to the intense chaos of adolescence.
So what do we do with this paradox? Maybe the issue isn’t necessarily just the pressure, but also the vagueness. We’re told abstractly to “Make good choices,” “Prepare for the future,” and give basic expectations of what we need to study for or submit, but we’re rarely given more specifics of what any of that really means. If society genuinely believes in the science behind cognitive development, then maybe its structures — academic, social, and extracurricular — should start reflecting that belief: lowering the stakes where learning is supposed to happen, while being transparent about the choices that have a lasting impact for kids who are ambitious but need guidance.
In lieu of murky expectations and pressure to succeed in areas that aren’t even clearly explained to them, adolescents need clarity. Maybe we need honest conversations that demystify what success looks like and what failure may cost, so we all have a more concrete grasp on the world that we are soon to enter. If the adults in our lives started acknowledging indecisiveness or confusion not as incompetence but as a natural part of growing and maturing, maybe the pressure wouldn’t feel so intense. To work against this unclear pressure–the paradox of adolescence–institutions could start using more transparent systems of feedback and mentorship. These could be regular, individualized check-ins with advisors or mentor-type adult figures trained not only in academics or college counseling, but employed to help students navigate their high school years with honesty and nuance. The skeletons of these systems themselves exist at Andover, yes, but how many students find themselves getting the help or guidance they need? Too often, these support systems can feel like formalities, disassociated from the genuine emotional and developmental needs of kids at Andover. Whenever certain more specific questions arise from students — “What if I don’t want to follow this path, but I’ve been walking on it for too long to stop? What happens if I fail this class? How exactly do I achieve this goal or increase the probability of achieving it?” — vagueness is the answer.
Educational curricula could aim to teach not only calculus and chemistry but also how to steer real-world experiences–transparently offering advice on how to thoughtfully make choices, analyze risk and reward, and deal with uncertainty. There are so many big questions that teenagers often don’t ever get any real answers to — like what does it mean to be ‘on track?’ What are the actual consequences of a wrong choice, and when are these choices reversible, when are they not? What does a gap year do for a student? What are the real pros and cons of the arts versus STEM? What should / does success look like ten years out — not just living in the moment of Junior year, Lower year, Upper year, and graduation? The truth is, nobody really knows the definitive answers…yet students are made to feel they should. There’s an invisible yet constantly present pressure to make the “right” choices without ever being told that there really is no “right” or a rulebook. Guidance or support isn’t necessarily just about having the right answers: it’s about providing help to build the tools that wrestle with questions in a way that is thoughtful, supportive, and genuine.
Adolescents shouldn’t feel like a guessing game where sometimes we randomly fall short and aren’t told why or how exactly to improve — it should be a stage where both risk and reflection exist, where mistakes aren’t just permitted but expected and truly embraced. Communicating expectations clearly, and paralleling consequences to developmental reality, isn’t coddling — it’s the difference between setting up a young person to grow or to set them up to fall with little guidance.
