Reflection Nonfiction Essay Making Sense of the Teenage Brain

Years ago, I came across the term, "teenage brain syndrome," in a book I found at my local library. I was instantly hooked by the phrase and began to read, becoming more and more captivated by the subject matter. As a divorced mother of two teenage girls, I found the information on the development of the teenage brain and how this development affected teen behavior and teen/parent communication to be a godsend. Finally, I thought, here is a possible answer to the mysteries surrounding the constant miscommunications of parents and teens. And even then, as a single, working mom who had yet to re-enter college, I felt a powerful longing to share this information with other parents. I checked out the book, read and absorbed parts of it, yet ultimately became distracted with the issues of daily life, and turned it back in, unfinished. I promptly forgot the book, went on with life and recalled the book only after scrambling around for an essay topic for one of my graduate writing classes, many years later. My essay, "Making Sense of the Teenage Brain: Why They Behave as They Do," was written for Dr. Isom's senior and graduate-level non-fiction topics class, "Writing for Children, Adolescents, and Families." We were told to write an informative piece that could be submitted to a magazine geared toward children, teens, and/or parents. The style and tone could be formal or informal, with personal stories woven in if the magazine's style permitted. My article was created in the format of a magazine article written particularly for parents of teenagers. Although it contained scientific research about the development of the teen brain, I wanted it to be written in an informal style, addressing a non-academic audience. Since this genre of article doesn't usually require a works cited page, one was not included. I was asked to research magazines, either by using the 2010 edition of The Children's Writers' and Illustrators Market Guide, or through a Google search, in order to find "a good fit" for my piece. I did both. The magazine I chose is called Your Teen chosen because it is one of the few teen parenting magazines that I found in my search, because it speaks to today's parents of teenagers about current, relevant issues and also because, as a secondary audience, it addresses teens as well. As an additional assignment, I had to compose a query letter to the magazine's editor, Susan Borison. In it, I described the article I had written and why I felt that it would be useful and interesting to the magazine's audiences. If possible, we were to get a copy of the magazine itself so that we could familiarize ourselves with its style and tone and to get a good look at the types of articles it typically publishes. Although I was unable to obtain a hard copy, I accessed the magazine's online version, and thoroughly studied the site and several of the current issue's articles.

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When completed, I turned in the essay with a sort of hollow feeling inside. I wondered why but didn't look too closely for the reasons. Another assignment complete. Time to move on. Now to the present. Before beginning the revision process, I printed out and re-read the original piece several times over. I made annotations in the margins and marked the copy with various notes within the text itself as I went along. I needed to regain a sense of what the essay was about, particularly the purpose and audience that I had settled on when first writing it. I also wanted to make initial, and tentative, decisions about what types of changes I'd likely be making overall. I realized that these first impressions/thoughts/ideas would likely change and evolve (which they did, of course). After re-reading the piece a number of times, I realized that the thesis, or whatever it was, was too broad and worse yet, I realized a painful, yet liberating, truth: I had written an article that was murky, without a clear foundation: I could not easily detect a firm thesis or argument, or at least, not the type of main statement I'd intended to make from the time the idea first germinated in my mind two and a half years ago. I'd meant to write a piece that informed parents, through solid research presented in simple layman's terms, about how their teens' brains were developing. Further, I wanted them to understand the effects of this development on the reasoning and the emotions of their teens, which in turn affects the teens' speech and behavior. Through this information, I wanted to offer a sense a hope and comfort to parents who, prior to reading the article, might feel hopeless, helpless, guilty, scared, and certainly bewildered by the words and actions of their teenage children. By reconsidering this text, I recognized the fact that I needed to further define the main statement of the piece and the scope of it. Oddly enough, when I forced myself to do this to either be clearer about the paper's premise or to come up with a more narrowly defined one, and a stronger plan for enhancing and reshaping the content, I felt some enthusiasm for the project, finally! Before, I'd been uneasy, not knowing why, and had therefore procrastinated, feeling stuck and miserable, unable to get started on the project. With the revision, although I did make a change to the title, I decided to maintain the original ideas of writing in the same tone and style for the same audience and with the original goals of bringing hope and help through this information to parents of teens (and maybe to teens themselves). The major change was to focus on communication how parent/teen communication is affected by teen brain development, rather than to just explain, "Your teen acts crazy because..." Before re-reading the original, I had thought I should focus primarily on incorporating additional research and adding the now-necessary works cited page. Afterward, I still felt that these items should be a priority, second only to reworking the foundational aspects of the text. Later, it turned out that the Works Cited page was mainly needed as a writing resource to keep me straight on my sources. It will likely not be a part of my final project

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since the committee and I have agreed that the paper will contain clear attributions, without the need of in-text citations. Before gathering additional research material, I took a look at the research already in the article and was surprised to find some of it rather flimsy or poorly cited. So then, I began to gather my research. This was the toughest part of the process: Deciding where to look (Google search, Google Scholar search, school library databases such as Academic Search Complete and J-Stor) and which articles to choose. In the end, I based my final decisions primarily on three criteria: Whether the content I needed was included in the article, Whether the source was reliable, and Whether the data was relatively current (and if not, I knew I would need to be able to make a solid, rational case for using such research).

Although I have successfully accessed and used the school's library databases in the past, I wound up using plain Google search entries for this piece. This type of search produced multitudes of solid entries for my purpose, so I just went with the path of least resistance and was satisfied that I'd found all the relevant information needed for the straightforward, simple piece I still planned to be read by the average perplexed parent of the average perplexing teen. As I sifted through and closely read the new research articles, and the one book I found to be most helpful, I began to see possibilities open up for reshaping my essay. While I discounted theories that would take me out in left-field, some of them very complex, I came across ideas that were fresh and new to me and that I felt would enhance my own revision. After choosing the articles, I saved copies of them online and printed hardcopies so I could mark them up. I read the hardcopies thoroughly, several times over, using various colored pens and highlighters to mark through text I didn't plan to use and to circle or underline bits or maybe whole blocks of information I did plan to use. Before I began the actual work of revision, I went into the digital text and made what I call an "F12 copy" of the piece, naming the new copy "Revision Essay" and the original copy "Original Essay." In this way, I would be able to retain the original to refer back to or to continue to make copies from (if needed) while having a copy to work within as I made additions and deletions and copied/pasted paragraphs or sentences being shuffled around within the document or relevant information from other documents as needed. And so I began the slow and arduous task of adding, deleting, re-writing, rearranging, copying and pasting text into or out of the online revision copy, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, making sure each read smoothly as I read and re-read each over and over again, not moving on until each was just right. The process was nevertheless recursive, as I would go back, time and again, re-reading "from the top" quite often. While revising, I made several changes that I know made the revision a stronger piece. In the revision, instead of jumping straight into the processes of brain development

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immediately, as I did in the original essay, saying "There are three developmental processes that go on inside the teen brain...," I provided a little background information first on the history of brain studies and the advent of the MRI, which made brain scanning possible, and therefore numerous crucial discoveries about brain development and functioning. I was then able to ease into the technical discussion of what the MRIs revealed. In another example, the original version made the statement, toward the end, "Whole sections and synapses of the teen brain remain disconnected during these years. " For the revision, I moved this statement toward the front of the piece and put it into context, backing it up with concrete scientific data. The sentence now reads, "MRIs indicate that whole sections of the teen brain can remain disconnected from the age of 12 up to sometime in the mid-20s, according to Debra Bradley Ruder of Harvard Magazine." A thorough explanation of the changes that occur in the wiring system of the teen brain follows. In the original piece, the paragraph was composed mostly of general comments about teen feelings and behavior, which are relevant observations within the essay, but which would have been better placed elsewhere. By the time these changes were made and I finished further adding, deleting, pasting, copying, rearranging, rethinking, and rewriting, I was mentally exhausted, physically weary, but immensely pleased and at peace. Time to smile widely and rest deeply.