Observation Paper #4

Class/sectio FHS 1500

n:

Your Name: Litzy Serna

Assignment: Observation #4

Background Information

Child’s age: 19

Fictitious “Sydney”
name:

Location: Markosian Library Redwood Road SLCC Campus

Brief I interviewed a 19 year old volleyball player here at SLCC

Description: during study hall in the library.

Biological Development

I decided to come up with about four rather specific questions for each section and asked
follow up questions when the answers were too broad. I started off by explaining to Sydney what
a circadian rhythm is and if she would consider her cycle of biological activity healthy, as in
getting enough sleep, or not healthy (Berger, 2016, p. 318 ). She that she would like to have
more sleep but didn’t consider her sleep cycle to be as terrible after taking a second to analyze
her daily routine. Right from the start, I could tell she had a really vibrant personally and I would
assume that she is isn’t sleep deprived and is getting enough sleep as a 19-year-old. She finally
concluded that she was getting around 7 to 8 hours depending on her morning classes and
according to how much sleep an adolescent is supposed to get, she is barely on the right track.
Before moving on to more personal questions, I asked Sydney if she was comfortable
answering a couple questions about her puberty and more specifically about her first period
known as menarche (Berger, 2016, p.320). The reason why I wanted to find out more about this
is to lead her on to my next question about the secular trend and if she would make a connection
between her menarche and the secular trend (Berger, 2016, p.320). She was comfortable enough
to share that she was one of the girls that actually had a rather late menarche and that luckily she
had good friends that never made fun of her because of it. In fact, she also shared that she
supported her close friends that were going through puberty early and I thought that was really
interesting since we’re learning about how peers really matter at the adolescent stage. But, with
that being said, I assumed that the secular trend did not affect her since her puberty did not come
at an early age and she because said she was an average height for her age, at that time.

Cognitive Development

Now that I got to know Sydney a little more, I moved on to asking more about how she
thought in her younger teen years such as when she was in high school. According to Piaget we
now know that adolescents have shifted from concrete operational thinking to more formal
operational thinking, where adolescents tend to make unnecessary assumptions about their
reality.” (Berger, 2016, p. 329). With that being said in order for me to find out about her teen
thinking, I asked her if she was willing to share a time when she was torn down by a simple
comment made from someone towards her. She stated that she could not recall a specific
comment but she shared that she had a very conservative personality in high school and was not
so outgoing until she joined the volleyball team. She shared that because her original shyness of
people explained why she would have such bad pre-game anxiety, she would always assume that
everyone in the crowd would judge her if she performed bad or missed an easy hit when really
every single player makes mistakes and people quickly forget about those unimportant actions.
This story indicated that she did indeed go through “adolescent egocentrism”, the overthinking of
what others might think of you.
Lastly, I asked if she could think of a time when she thought she was invisible, special, or
destined to become something big or accomplish something important. It took her a second to
think, but she shared a time when she was about 12, playing recreational soccer that she thought
she was going to be ranked one of the best female soccer players in the state since she was
always scoring goals. This was before finding out that she was far more better and more
interested in volleyball. From that brief story, I concluded that she also went through a quick
phase of “personal fable” where she thought she was actually going to excel far in soccer when
really she switched her mindset within a couple years later (Berger, 2016, p. 330).

Psychosocial Development

Last but not least, I started to finish up my interview by asking Sydney questions about
how she defined her identity and perhaps if she could share an important decision she has come
across so far. Keeping in mind that she is currently a college athlete, I started by asking if she
ever considered not playing college volleyball and just focus on other stuff. She immediately
answered yes, that for the longest time she had her mind set on going on her LDS mission, being
more devoted to her religion, and getting away from home for a while. After a few summers and
at the last moment she decided not go on her mission because she did not want to miss out on her
athletic college opportunity as she is still young. Just the fact that she considered postponing her
athletic career and was willing to “get away” for a while, was a clear example of Erikson's term
“moratorium” (Berger, 2016, p. 352).
I elaborated more on this question and asked why she was originally so decided on going
on her LDS mission. She answered that it was mainly because she was influenced by what all her
older sibling and parents did when they graduated from high school. She also mentioned that at
the time she did not have any college offers and saw it as a way to experience new things. When
she mentioned that she was “influenced”, I immediately thought of Erikson's other term,
“foreclosure” that means adopting a role or value from a parent without questioning (Berger,
2016, p. 352). This made me assume that Sydney was forming “foreclosure” because of her
uncertainty of what she wanted to pursue after graduating.

Reference List

Berger, K. S. (2016). Invitation to the life span (3rd ed.) [with Salt Lake Community College
supplement]. New York, NY: Worth Publishers.