Observational Assignment
I must admit, when I went to my cousin’s high school graduation this past summer, I wasn’t thinking that this would be the subject for an observation paper in my Adolescent Psychology class. Yet, as soon as I read this assignment I couldn’t help but to think back to that day where there were a couple dozen adolescents all in one place. A group of four individuals stood out to me, two of them in particular, that day. For starters, they were the only adolescents that didn’t have their heads down looking at their phones interacting only with the people that didn’t happen to be sitting next to them. Though I never did find out their names, for this exercise I’ll give them names. I do know that they were between 18 and 19, two boys and two girls. So, the first young man, we’ll call him “Dylan”, was a tall, well-built, good looking young man who was rather soft spoken and well-behaved. His friend, we’ll call him “Cody”, was almost the polar opposite of Dylan. He was on the shorter side in stature, heavy set, a little awkward with his movements and was very loud and rather obnoxious. Cody’s distinctly inconsistent voice was probably what drew my attention to his table I the first place. His actions were what kept my attention for the better part of an hour. Whether his jokes or comments were well received or not, Cody never seemed to be discouraged from continuing to laugh, joke and make comments (usually at the expense of others). The girls of this foursome, “Mia” who was tall, athletic and very pretty and “Candace” who was equally as tall yet hadn’t quite “come into her own yet”, seemed fairly quiet and shy at first. A lot of my observations of the girls were through their body language. From her constant eye rolling and smirking I could see that Mia seemed to be annoyed by Cody’s antics. Dylan and Candace, on the other hand, seemed to be amused by Cody. Laughing at his comments and spastic movements. Occasionally, Dylan would even make a...