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SPECIMEN 001

Deanne Gonzales

College of Southern Nevada

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Specimen 001 is a twelve year old girl, a middle school girl who is currently a

seventh grader. A lot bigger than most kids her age, Specimen 001 is standing at about

five feet and 7 inches in height while weighing around two-hundred ten pounds. She

enjoys staying in her room, listening to music, watch some shows on some streaming

websites, and crocheting. Specimen 001 is also a great cook. When her mother is busy

working, she would often cook for her family. Aside from what she enjoys doing inside

her home, Specimen 001 is a part of the band class at her school. She plays the

saxophone every now and then at her home whenever she is in need of practice. Her

family consists of two older brothers and a younger sister, earning her the third spot in

the family. At school, Specimen 001 seems to be an outgoing, friendly person. She has

several friends all around the school. Although, her life at home is not quite as outgoing

and crazy. As mentioned before, Specimen 001 is mostly just a homebody and does not

prefer to go outside or do any outdoor things.

Physically, Specimen 001 is a lot bigger than what she should be — around five

foot, seven inches and approximately two-hundred and ten pounds. She does look a lot

older than her age. As Specimen 001 is only a twelve year old girl, her face and her body

does not necessarily look as if this is quite the age she is in. Many would often comment

that she may look around the age of eighteen, maybe even older. This is due to how big

Specimen 001 is and also how tall she is. According to Angel Oswaly, the average height

of women in America is around 5 foot and 5 inches. This shows that Specimen 001 is

most likely to be above average for her height, though not by much. Once again, she is a

lot bigger than most kids her age, even boys her age. They mostly cannot compete with
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her. During this observation, I have noticed that Specimen 001 tried working out for a

little bit. I once observed her exercise on an elliptical machine which lasted about twenty

minutes. Several days after, Specimen 001 decided that she will go on a diet. She refused

to eat out at a pizza restaurant and would only eat eggs and occasionally tortillas here

and there.

After a week of doing the dieting and the exercising, Specimen 001 decided to cut

it out of her life. She is now eating whatever she could find around the house and have

completely stopped exercising on the elliptical machine. According to Jurist Lionial

Kumar, children her age, adolescence, this age is around the time that puberty, or “sexual

maturity” as Kumar put it, starts. This is the time where a lot of changes will and are

happening. Among many different things, there will be an abundance amount physical

changes that Specimen 001 will go through. Around this age, physical changes can be

defining to most children and may affect their emotional health. As puberty hits every

adolescent different, many children are often bothered by this. According to Angela

Oswalt, adolescent would often feel disappointment or feel self-conscious because of

they way they are growing up. As sexual maturity is not the same for everybody, children

who are at the peak of experiencing it are having many different emotions and feelings

about the changes that is happen to them.

On the emotional aspect of Specimen 001’s development, a lot can definitely be

said. As many scientists would often mention, the emotional development of children

around the age of twelve, puberty, can be quite cumbersome and all over the place. As for

Specimen 001, her emotional level can definitely be considered as all over the place.
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From the data that I have collected throughout the observation, I have seen her go

through several loops in the emotional roller coaster. On the regular, she seems like a

happy girl who would just like to sit and watch television. Although, on certain days

though, Specimen 001 can be a bit tough to handle. There will be a time where she would

shut down and give everyone around her the silent treatment. This will most likely

happen when she is being confronted. Around this age, children are most likely to rebel

and feel as if their parents are the worst thing that could happen in the world. When she

does something wrong and her family would talk to her about her actions, she would just

sit there and stay quiet. She would do this often yet there are times where Specimen 001

would yell back. This would only happen when she is not trying to hide anything, as I

have observed. Many adults would often sneer at teenagers and young adults whenever

they mention the thought of being stressed but most people do not know is that around

this age, children are filled with nothing but stress. Oswalt explains that waking up one

day and experiencing all these different changes in their physical and emotional

development, young adults would most definitely be going through extreme stress. Not

only that these teenagers have the stress of school, they also feel the stress of learning

how to maneuver and control these different changes in their lives. In order to help the

young adults around us to feel less stress, Oswalt suggests that as family members,

friends, and peers should support the person suffering. It is always important to have

someone to support them when they are going through this crucial part in their lives,

despite being young. Oswalt explains that having a family and just a group that supports

that person will most definitely decrease their stress level. Children who feel like they are
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loved and feel the importance and significance of their presence would most likely have a

positive attitude towards life, hence having a positive emotional development.

Philosophically speaking, Specimen 001 looks at education how every student her

age, or so it seemed, would look at it. During my lengthy observation, I have heard that

she has skipped school several times. His brother and many other people, including the

cops have talked to her about skipping school. When being questioned, she finds school

stressful, yet necessary. She understands that school is crucial as well as beneficial to her

and her future yet her attitude shows that she could not care any less. When one of her

older brother spoke to her about skipping school and just rebelling, he explains that she is

basically throwing her future away. In this talk, she seemed to sound as if she cares about

school, saying that she knew she should not have skipped and be late every single day yet

she continues to do the same. When asked about her views on education, she says it is

important to her. Though she rarely speaks of school, there will be times where she

would mention it. She will say what class she is taking and how she hard it is. She would

also ask her brothers on what classes she should take for the next school year. According

Bruce G. Simons-Morton, et al., there are many different aspects and reasons as to why a

student, specially around this age, are unable to enjoy school. Simons-Morton et al.,

explains that there are several psychosocial factors such as having a poor social skill,

lower household income, academic failure and so on. With these given mediators as to

why students such as Specimen 001 are unable to find education “fun,” it will probably

due to her social skills. Though from what I have seen, Specimen 001 is rather very
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opinionated and is most definitely friendly. As an observer, I would not think that she has

a poor social skill. In fact, I would think that she has an amazing social life at school.

As I have not seen how well or how terrible she is doing at school, I could not

make a hypothesis about her academics. I am unable to see her progress and see if the

reason as to why she does not mention school at all was because of failing academically.

Although this is not impossible to happen, I highly doubt that it is the reason. As Oswalt

mentioned on her essay, children around this age are often bombarded by many different

responsibilities and priorities. Parents, peers, family members and many other types of

people are often criticizing young adults such as Specimen 001 on the decisions they

make on a regular basis yet they do not understand the stress and hardships these students

would go through. Many parents are often criticizing their children into doing great at

school yet they never understand, or would forget how difficult it was for them to

juggling several things at one time. Perhaps the reason as to why Specimen 001 does not

speak of school or mentions that she enjoys it even to the littlest bit was simply because

she is not happy. Perhaps the reason as to why she would just often brush the subject

under the rug was because she would rather talk about anything else but school. Which is

completely understandable.

Socially, Specimen 001 is friendly and outgoing for the most part. She seems to

have a decent amount of friends at school. She would often sneak herself into

conversations that would normally nothing to do with her, and state her feelings and

opinions on the topic that is being discussed around her. As her phone currently taken

away from her, there is no observation on how she feels or reacts towards social media
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but despite this small obstacle in her path, she still manages to be updated with whatever

youths are into as of today. Oswalt carefully explained that both social and emotional

development are closely related to each other. Both of these aspects help mold the person

they grow up to be. Not having enough social interaction with different people can hurt a

person’s emotional health. And having an uncertain emotional health cannot guarantee a

great social interaction with great people either. These two aspects will have to work

together perfectly in order to work properly and give the person that is hosting them a

proper development. Around this age, twelve years old, this is where mostly each person

learns how to distinguish each person by their gender. This is where things would often

start being awkward as this is around the time where each young adult would question

many things in life: sexual orientation, and gender identity, as Oswalt mentioned. This

creates a dilemma in their social and emotional development depending on the peers they

are with and the choices they make. Angela Oswalt also mentioned that the youths of this

age are often struggling to balance many different things in their lives. Around this age,

they have several classes, several teachers, many different types of people coming in and

out of their lives, homework, priorities, and responsibilities. It can be too much for

children around this age and therefore, their social development may not be as where it

should be. Having such priorities and responsibilities may just have enough room to be

able to exercise a healthy social interaction with their peers considering the time and

energy they have.

The intellectual development part of this observation was the most difficult one, in

my opinion. During this part of the observation, Specimen 001 did not show any
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intellectual developments that is clear enough to see and understand. According to J'Anne

Ellsworth, intellectual development for late adolescents such as Specimen 001 would be

things such as reasoning abilities, ability to solve problems, and even “student wishing to

change the world.” But in Specimen 001’s case, it was difficult to get these types of

reaction from her. Often, if she runs into any sort of problems, Specimen 001 would just

run away from it by doing either hiding or ignoring it. I have noticed that during the

whole observation, she would just disregard any problems she would run into just like

what she would do when she is being faced with any sort of confrontation.

A lot of children or students her age would often talk about changing the world,

even if it is the smallest of things yet Specimen 001 has talked about none of it. Though

she would often interject whenever her siblings talk about politics here and there, her

opinions would just really consist of saying that she does not support Trump, or that she

does not like republicans. She has not talked anything about changing the world, or

wanting to create a change. Though it is not completely a terrible thing for students her

age to not care about changing the world, or at least a part of it, it would definitely

change the course of herself, her mind, and her development if she does decide that she

wants to change some things for the better. Despite being young and thinking that she

will not change anything, thinking about it and wanting to do something about it is doing

something, as opposed to just staying quiet and watching from a distance.

Although, despite not being able to see any of these certain aspects in her

intellectual development, I have seen, and heard some morality aspects that changes the

course of this part of her development. For instance, the way she decided to choose her
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religion instead of letting her family feed their beliefs on to her is definitely a huge thing.

She once mentioned that she believes in something different than what her mother does.

Another thing that I have noticed that changes her development would be, when one time,

her brother has confronted her about her friends, he described them to be people that will

not be good for her. In short, they are basically bad influence with her growing. She has

admitted that these friends of her had made her, or let her, drink alcohol, but she had

denied that she has done anything else. She mentioned that her friends would often

smoke cigarettes and marijuana around her but knowing that those things are wrong, she

has rejected them and did not fall for any peer pressure. According to Oswalt, children at

this certain age would often want to mature, or grow up, faster, hence trying to do mature

things such as smoking and drinking. She explains that children around this age, specially

teenagers, would often have to make decisions that will determine their morality and their

intellectuality. It is just up to them to decide and understand what is “right” and what is

“wrong”.

Works Cited

Angela Oswalt. "Adolescent Physical Development." Mental Help Early Childhood Cognitive

Development Language Development Comments. Accessed December 02, 2018.

Retrieved from https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/adolescent-physical-development/.

Angela Oswalt. "Adolescent Physical Development." Mental Help Early Childhood Cognitive

Development Language Development Comments. Accessed December 04, 2018.

Retrieved from https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/adolescent-moral-development/

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Angela Oswalt. "Adolescent Physical Development." Mental Help Early Childhood Cognitive

Development Language Development Comments. Accessed December 05, 2018.

Retrieved from https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/adolescent-social-development/

Angela Oswalt. "Adolescent Physical Development." Mental Help Early Childhood Cognitive

Development Language Development Comments. Accessed December 05, 2018.

Retrieved from https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/adolescent-emotional-development/

Bruce G. Simons-Morton, Aria Davis Crump, Denise L. Haynie, Keith E. Saylor; Student–school

bonding and adolescent problem behavior , Health Education Research, Volume 14, Issue

1, 1 February 1999, Pages 99–107, https://doi.org/10.1093/her/14.1.99

J’Anne Ellsworth. “ESE 504” Methods and Materials in Special Education. Accessed December

05, 2018. Retrieved from http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/%7Ejde7/ese504/class/pepsi/reading2-1-

2.html

Jurist Lionial Kumar, V. (2013). Adolescence behaviour problems : How to tackle or prevent? I-

Manager's Journal on Educational Psychology, 6(4), 13-17. Retrieved from

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