my manifesto for the evening; clasp your hands and sing.

[aamcnamara]

(No, I still haven't written on the novel. That's my next task. People keep asking me good questions!)
(This is related to my previous post.)

mrissa asked me here about my strong identification as a teenager, and whether I thought it was personal or something generational.

I got a little off-topic--short answer: I think it's mostly personal--and it turned into an interesting introspective thing for me, so I'm posting it here and linking in a comment.

This is my answer.

I have always wanted to be taken as an equal by the people I look up to.

Part of that has been wanting to grow up, already, so that I can be an adult. But part of that is also knowing that I can't hurry time, and that people know I am young, and that I want to be a part of the community now. And I don't want to be a part of the community on false pretenses, even if I could get in that way, because that feels like lying, and to be a member of the community you have to tell the truth.

And it's all mixed up with the times when people have thought I'm stupid or lying because I'm a kid, and my righteous anger to show them that kids (and teens) are in fact smarter than you realize, sharper than you think, and will not let you off so easy this time. And with having chosen to go from homeschooling to school with my age-peers, rather than skipping grade after grade to find somewhere the academics were challenging, because I wanted to have friends.

In other words, I think it's probably a personal difference [between me and mrissa on this subject], but in any case, thanks for the opportunity to think about just why I have that strong belief. It'll be interesting to see what happens when I am not, in fact, a teenager any more. (If every generation does this, maybe I understand more about how older generations of fans act than I thought I did.)

[Related to shadesong's post: In general, though, I think that today's generation of fans can find more geeky friends--it's more okay to be geeky in a lot more places today, and there's also the Internet--which allows them to own their geek pride, but at the same time, there's no getting around the fact that they're teens; and sometimes the adult programming just doesn't give teens what they want. Often, perhaps.]

Comments

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

"...but for people to treat a 20-year-old as part of the indistinguishable mass labeled "people who can carry on interesting conversations.""
This. (Or a sixteen-year-old, or whatever age.)

"I never felt a shortage of people my own age...the idea that I would need some time to just be around people my own age never computed for me."
This is likely the difference between us. I had a very small group of people-my-age who were available to me when I was homeschooled, didn't have anything in common with any of the girls and detested most of the boys. But since I have an enduring faith in people, I believed that there were some people my age, somewhere, who I would want to hang out with. (Turns out I was right, too.) Definitely I enjoy having friends of all ages, but I also love having friends who are my own physical age.

Your point about different markers for generations is a good one. aliseadae's college has something called the Mindset List which it compiles every year.

And your point about teen programming maybe not being for me is a good one, and one of my blind spots, I think. Still, I am not anti-anime, and I would rather have some teen programming than no teen programming, even if the panels turned out to mostly be about anime and Twilight, because I know that teens read and watch other things, too, and if we have teen programming then those other panels will happen eventually, too. (See: my enduring faith in people.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, and if teen-only programming is something you believe in as a concept, it may be something you have to encourage people to have when it's explicitly not for you, because you won't be even its theoretical audience all that much longer.

It will be interesting to me to see whether or when your age-related identity shifts from "teen" to "college student," and, if it does at all, whether you start feeling similarly about having programming aimed at college students as a group or whether that shift corresponds to at least partially leaving the teen identity group.

(Someone has already told you about the Dell Magazines writing contest for undergrads, right?)

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

That will be interesting for me to see, too. *g*

(Yes, they have.)

[aliseadae]

My identity is somewhere there muddled up between "teen" and "college student". In the world of SFF, I still feel young and new and like a teen. At college I am surrounded by my fellow students and I am not a teen. Nineteen is a weird age. I still want to find teenaged or college aged friends in the SFF community. While I had plenty of friends during elementary school, junior high, and high school, they were not at all interested in SFF. I have not found as many people my age with whom I can have discussions like the ones I have with aamcnamara. I found people in college but then I come back here (and I love these cities) and have lost the large group of people for a time.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

College summers can really suck. You go from being surrounded by people you like and more or less picked for yourself to having your friends not very accessible by the standards you've just spent the year getting used to. And even when you have a very good relationship with your parents, going from being in charge of yourself in your own place to having someone else in charge of you again can be very jarring.

[aliseadae]

Yeah. Especially since I have to drive for a half an hour to hang out with aamcnamara and very few of my friends from high school are available and when I hang out with them they no longer quite know the person that I am.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, either high school friends have been through their own changes and aren't quite the same themselves, or they haven't yet and the gap is sort of there between you.

Of the three summers that were between years of college, I spent the latter two doing summer research away from home. I don't know if that'll turn out to be possible in fields that interest you, but it was really good for me not just in terms of having a sense of career stuff but also socially. The summer research things were a lot more congruent with where I was then than hanging out with my high school friends would have been.

Not that greykev is not awesome; he is awesome. But I think part of why greykev and I have been each other's adopted siblings so well is that we weather changes in each other much better than some of our other friends from that time did (or would have if they'd had the chance).

[aliseadae]

Mm. I have a friend from high school whose house I can stay at and who I can talk with until one in the morning but she's the exception and also off being an counselor at camp. The rest of my friends are fine and nice people but not /me/ people. Besides, everyone is sort of bad at organizing things to do.

[ckd]

I love the Mindset List (even when it makes me feel really old[1]) because it does a pretty good job of expressing the generational shift in experiences that are and aren't shared between different people.

[1] The class of 2012, described in the most recent list, were mostly born around the time I graduated from college. Oy.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

See, now you're making me feel young.

[aliseadae]

That's /my/ class. But then I feel less young if I think about the fact that my uncle was in college around the time I was born and he does not seem old to me.

(er, hi. I don't think I know you. I saw you around at Fourth Street though.)

[ckd]

Hi! Yeah, I don't think we actually met, but your LJ-name sounds familiar so I suspect I saw you around as well. (But see, I'm old! So I can claim bad memory, right? It's gotta be good for something....)

[aliseadae]

May I add you? I look like this.

[ckd]

I'd already added you back before I saw this comment, so it's a bit redundant to say that I don't mind you adding me.... :-D