Deciphering the mind of a teenager... I can't imagine this'll be too easy, even if I am one. Actually, it will probably be even harder. Milton's been gone a long time. If I find him in my room, I will beat him with this bag pipe.   

• Through my experiences in the past 5 years as a teenager, I have come to only one conclusion: My life cannot be summed up in only one conclusion. Anyone that I have ever asked to classify me has never been able to come up with a correct answer. Is there a correct answer though? Sure there is, and it's actually pretty easy. "You are Stuart Karaffa." I am me. Is that so hard to think up while we're in high school? It must be. And I know, it sounds like some corny line out of those shoddy 2nd grade videos. But it's true. To classify me is impossible, and not because I'm without an identity, but because I have already found one. 

I think I may have been struggling with the whole identity thing right after grade school at Ogden Ave, and moving into Park Junior High. Not yet had I thought about what I wanted to be or where I wanted to go in life, because I gave so much attention to my academics. As Marcia would say, I was at a diffusion status. The notion of identifying myself to the world had not even entered my mind. In 7th grade, however, I began to see that school could only bring me so far as a person. To help myself in this situation, I found one group of friends and started hanging out with them. Sports were a common activity, and I wasn't very good at most sports, but I knew that I still had fun being with these kids, so I stayed with it. This was my foreclosure stage, or the point at which I chose an identity that I did not particularly know. Finally, in eighth grade, I started to get frustrated with the fact that I was the only one going home after school while most of my other friends were on teams. So I tried out for basketball, and of course didn't make it, because I was (and still am) terrible at basketball. It was at this point that I started to question who I really was, and had thus reached Marcia's moratorium status. To solve my crisis, I focused on what exactly it was that I enjoyed doing. So I went out and did what I knew I liked, and my friends were fine with that, because regardless of the situation, we were still going to have fun together. This is where I reached the identity of being me, and an identity achievement status. 

Lyons Township High School 

If junior high was where I decided on my identity of doing my own thing, high school is where I've proved my stance. In the past 3 and a half years, it has been commonplace for me to spontaneously "try on" a new role. For, as Erickson detailed in his Identity vs. Role Confusion stage, I now have a comfortable environment in which to do it. Throughout my time at LT, I have been elected class secretary, played soccer for 2 years, done track for 3, cross country for 1, been on WLTL for 1.5, and on scholastic bowl for 2 years.  Right now, I've limited the involvement to radio management, scholastic bowl, and soon to be track. The importance of school for me now is not very emphasized, for I feel that the lessons learned through involvement are much more useful than those learned in any classroom.