By Emily Ottinger | Associate editor
Today’s teenagers don’t realize there are consequences for their actions. Teens are coddled, given multiple chances to make up for their mistakes and sometimes never take responsibility for them. With all these second chances, are teens really going to be prepared for the real world? High schoolers are constantly asking for deadline extensions, being allowed to use notes, or extra credit to help them pass a class. In reality, college profes- sors will rarely allow us any of these loopholes. In the workplace, it will also be highly unusual for bosses to ever give you such breaks. So with students getting so many in high school, are they really getting prepared for college, let alone the real world?
All this lack of accountability has given teens a sense of entitlement. An extreme case of this recently came out of Texas, when 16-year-old Ethan Coach was able to receive no prison time after being convicted of four counts of intoxicated manslaughter by using the “affluenza” defense — too privileged to know any better. Coach had so many advantages by being rich that he was never held responsible for his actions, his attorney argued, which lead Coach to believe and argue there should be no consequences. In a stunning ruling, the judge agreed with Coach’s defense that prison time wasn’t appropriate for Coach. Instead, he’ll spend 10 months in a posh rehabilitation center. (See page 1 story)
So how many chances is society willing to give teens and how is this going to affect them in the real world? At least one Indian Trail senior shares our concern. “When you keep getting chances handed to you, you never learn from them (mistakes) and fix them,” said Julianna Briggs, a General Studies senior. So next time think Indian Trail, when you ask for that deadline extension or extra credit assignment for work that was suppose to be done in the first place.