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Our world cares extremely about early success - we should acquire straight A’s at school, be accepted by prestigious universities, and when we are 25, we should start working in our dream professions. However, the majority of the people do not begin being extraordinary; rather, we find our abilities and capabilities at a progressive speed. Rich Karlgaard experienced just this. He did not obtain stellar grades at Stanford University and he worked at weird jobs while he was in his twenties. Only after years, he found a high-technology magazine in Silicon Valley and ultimately be the publisher of the magazine Forbes. In this review, you will learn the science behind the reasons why some of us bloom afterward in our lives, and the advantages you can obtain if you focus on attaining your purposes. Throughout this review, you will discover why the obsession with early success is harmful to teenagers’ mental health; how culture impacts our definition of achievement; and things to do when reaching a sticking point. Chapter 1 - The emergence of the wunderkind defined a criterion of early success for millennials. Let’s start with a tale of an early achiever - an individual who developed faster than normal. Jonah Lehrer, a pop-neuroscience author, was born and grew up in Los Angeles and started his trip to achievement when he earned a thousand-dollar reward for a NASDAQ-sponsored composition competition when he was 15 years old. Then, he went to Columbia University where he studied neuroscience and became the co-writer of an article about Down Syndrome’s genetic roots. However, Lehrer was not only a science master; his writing was great as well. In his 31, he had three books published - and even listed in the New York Times best-seller list. His success was one of a type that people the same age would extremely desire for themselves. With his radio shows and TV appearances, Lehrer started to make lots of money with his side profession as a paid speaker. For one hour of talking, he was getting up to $40,000. In the end, he could afford a million-dollar house in the Hills of Hollywood. Lehrer’s spring up from an excellent student to a media marvel initiated the concept of a cultural champion: the early bloomer, in other words, wunderkind - that exactly meant “wonder child”. The typical wunderkind advances early and arrives at the peak of their selected discipline quicker than everybody else. They also tend to get wealthy and renowned as they proceed. This is frequently because of their extraordinary capability - like being gifted in mathematics or technology - or since they have good family networks that allow them to navigate. These early bloomers are all around the world - from actors such as Margot Robbie and Adam Driver to musicians such as Jacob Collier and Beyoncé. The media also loves the early bloomer archetypal. For instance, every big magazine publishes an annual issue formed on a list of early bloomers, like the 30 Under 30 list of Forbes magazine consisting of stellar entrepreneurs. The issue here is, our world’s love of the early achiever archetypal forces a hazardous message: if you have not transformed an industry, started a billion-dollar company, or had seven figures around your 30s, you are failed. As we will observe in the following chapters, this message is harmful to teenagers, all of whom advance in distinct ways and at different paces. Chapter 2 - The stress to become successful early is impacting teenagers’ mental health. In the mid-twentieth century, the United States started to transform from an aristocracy to a meritocracy - in which everyone could achieve based on skill, instead of money or social class. In answer to this, students, families, and employers started to give extreme importance to test scores and university rankings. Currently, it is extremely normal for young people to enter fundamental exams like the SAT more than once in their junior and senior years to show their academic talent to universities. However, they pay a price. Families give thousands of dollars for costly tutors and classes every year for their children to get ready for exams, hoping this will aid them in their way to an Ivy League college. In the meantime, the cost for students is the price plus all the stress. The test preparation business makes approximately $1 billion annually, having come tutors such as New York-based Anthony James Green that has an hourly price of $1,000. These exaggerated prices demonstrate how students and parents care about university admissions “arms race”, for which people make war, and sometimes deceive, to make one’s way. This nerve-racking condition causes a mental health problem in the US. World Health Organization stated in a survey conducted in 2014 that depression is the top reason for sickness in adolescents. This is why suicide rates are increasing. For instance, three skilled students at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California found dead because of suicide between 2014 and 2015. During these times, 42 students were hospitalized or cured for suicidal opinions. Jean M. Twenge, the writer of more than 140 scientific articles and books about young people, constructed a theory about the reasons for the decreasing mental health of teenagers. Her study attributes the rise in depression to an alteration from intrinsic goals to extrinsic goals. Intrinsic goals are about our self-advancement as a person and involve things like getting able to do specific activities or developing a powerful perception of sense. Extrinsic goals, however, are about tangible earnings and other evaluations of status involving perfect grades, great salary, and nice appearance. Twenge thinks that our world appreciates the extrinsic goals of richness and academic achievement over intrinsic goals of cultivating self-knowledge - or just happiness. Of course, teenagers would struggle. Chapter 3 - Teenagers develop at different paces, according to the time their brains mature. The author was struggling when he was 25 years old. He had graduated from university with moderate grades and had few professional expectations, thus, he became a security guard. One night, he realized something staggering while guarding a truck rental yard. The security guard who was guarding the neighborhood lumberyard was not a teenager like him, rather it was an aggressive Rottweiler barking at everyone who passes nearby. That was the moment he recognized that his job was pointless - specifically because it could be done by a dog in a better way. At the same time, Steve Jobs, who was also 25 years old, was in the ballpark of opening Apple to the public and change the computer business eternally. How would a teenager ever keep up with? During his late twenties, the author attained a key moment in his professional life. It was at that moment that he sensed like his brain had all of a sudden “awaken”. He could understand New York Times rather than watching the news on TV. He could also find venture ideas and pen complicated professional proposals, although he could hardly write a meaningful phrase before. Why was this abrupt awakening? The arising research states that the majority of the people aged between 18 and 25 are not complete adults. They are in the stage named post-adolescence in which they lack some cognitive processes that fully operating adult brains possess. In teenage brains, the prefrontal cortex - liable for preparation, organization, and problem-solving - is the latest section that evolves. We can understand that adolescents are not quite ready to bloom until later in their lives. For evidence, look at the findings of theNational Institute of Mental Health-sponsored research of longitudinal brain advancement. The researchers observed 5,000 children aged 3 to 16 until their adulthood and discovered that their brains were not fully developed until they were 25 or more years old. Therefore, young people's urge to attain early success is meaningless. Furthermore, it is meaningless for the families to anticipate their children to be extraordinary cognitive wise at the times their brains have not completely established yet. Rather, kids and young adults should be told that they can be successful at any time. Having time to find out what their skills and likes are vital for permanent happiness and achievement. Chapter 4 - A significant time for self-realization is “emerging adulthood”. Today, the conventional road to find a job and marry is different. Teenagers are spending more time graduating, gaining independence financially, and forming a family. Rather, lots of them choose to be uncommitted to romantic others or stable homes. Huge national research that is done in the US since the late 1970s discovered that currently the people at 25 years old are twice more tend to attend school than their parents, and 50 percent are more tend to be aided financially by their families. Therefore, what we frequently named “adulthood” is occurring later than ever. However, this is not a pitiful thing. A Clark University psychology professor, Jeffrey Arnett, believes that social and monetary shifts have caused a requirement for a new life period between adolescence and young adulthood. He named this stage “emerging adulthood”, and this occurs when people are approximately aged between 18 and 30. The cultural shift that caused this phenomenon contains fewer jobs for new graduates, the requirement for more education, and a slow pace among teenagers to establish a family. Arnett, being a late bloomer, thinks that our twenties are a significant time for exploration - where we jump on adventures, trips, and relationships with a feeling of freedom that we may not own afterward. He also thinks that extending the time for emerging adulthood has lots of advantages for the brain.