Are the Teens of Today "Doomed"?

This response was written for an assignment in a Social Issues class that I am currently enrolled in.

“Are the teens of today doomed?” A question with a grey area if one has ever existed. The answer isn’t clear-cut; it isn’t even poorly cut, for that matter. There are cases where the only answer to this question is screaming “Duh” directly in one’s face, and there are cases where one could look at the positeur of this enigma and scoff at their audacity for even asking the question in the first place. Then like any other good grey-area-question there are cases where the answer is the universal hand sign for “ehh…kinda”. Of course, exploring just one of these avenues would be incredibly boring.

Destiny. Insert scoff here. Even the notion that it exists is enough to incite a mocking chuckle. Destiny is merely an excuse for those who couldn’t make it work. Yes, there’s a degree of luck, but “destiny”? Psh. To say that teens these days are “doomed” is to say that it is their destiny, which, as I believe, is crap. Teens, and everyone for that matter, at some point in their life, have been presented with the chance and/or chances to make their life good. Maybe those chances were in school. You could’ve done well, gotten good grades, gotten a scholarship and gone to a college. Maybe not a haughty one, but a college, none-the-less. Maybe your chance was doing work; maybe you had a chance to begin a corporate ascent, and break free of your stereotypes. The real point is that everyone either will, has, or has had their chance to make it work, but many lack the foresight and wisdom to seize that chance when its there. This, of course, is no one’s fault but their own, fair or unfair. (Another scoff at fairness)

As numerous as the people are who live unfulfilled lives, there are those who succeed. Talking about them isn’t as interesting, though, due to a lack of chances to scoff at prospects like “destiny” and “fairness”. These people did what we call “work”. They are the ones who, either by force or by choice, they did the necessary “work” to achieve in realms of life. Anyone can be one of these people ("anyone" denoting anyone who doesn’t have a crippling mental disability). All one needs is what is known as “work ethic”. Unfortunately, a very good portion of the teens of today don’t even know what this concept is, let alone possess it. If you see one of them, scoff at them in the name of society; society will appreciate your altruistic deed. One could argue that teens are “doomed” (scoff) because teens don’t have work ethic. Here’s the counter argument: it is almost entirely their fault, not the fault of "destiny". Another argument could attack the opinions stated herein by saying that “ethnicity, lack of school funds and family problems can stop students from achieving success”. This works both ways. Of course this COULD stop a student from succeeding, and even if he DIDN’T have these problems he STILL wouldn’t succeed if he didn’t have work ethic (or care). If a student is really plagued by these problems, it is a responsibility that must be taken up by the student (whoa, that sounds like work) to address the teacher and find out ways that he or she could work around the problems (staying after school, getting extra help, etc [oh man, more WORK {its so hard!}]).

Work; responsibility; work ethic; CARING(!?); all of these thing are parts of a formula. Any student, no matter where they are, no matter what their personal and familial situation, no matter what their ethnicity, CAN succeed and almost certainly WILL succeed if they embody these characteristics and employ these methods. Thousands did it before them. They have NO excuse, especially not DESTINY (SCOFF!!!!), for them not to succeed. They have no one to blame for their choices but themselves.