Just try your best Try everything you can And don't you worry what they tell themselves when you're away

Driving home from a weekend in Tulsa and Joplin this weekend, I was listening to my iPod (a strange thing for me to do in the car, because I am normally an NPR junkie - but on Sundays - it is difficult to find anything good to listen to on NPR, so iPod it was) and the song "In the Middle" by Jimmy Eat World came on. I always forget how much I like the message of this song until I hear it again randomly.

I've always felt like it would be the perfect song to play for 14 year old me - or 22 year old me for that matter... I was always so worried about other peoples' impressions and thoughts about me. I was always so concerned with what people had to say about me. I wanted everyone to like me - and I wanted people to think I was cool. I was pretty sure that everything that was happening to me during that time period was the most important thing going on in the world at that time.

Typical adolescent thought pattern. Adolescents aren't capable of thinking globally for the most part. They are the centers of their own universes. And I think a lot of adults use this as a way to write adolescents off as less than rational - or that they don't have valid opinions - but I think that we have to go through that phase in our lives in order to realize that there are bigger problems and issues in this world - and that not everything revolves around us and our tiny problems.

This was clearly way too profound thinking for a Sunday evening. But I love that it occurred to me. Because I do think that I will eventually work with adolescents again in some capacity - and the more I can gain insight into their thought patterns (and if I can manage to remember that insight at crucial FRUSTRATING moments), the more effective I can be as an educator.

It just takes some time.