As a fourteen-year-old boy entering high school, peer pressure is one of the many aspects in your life. You’re pressured to fit in by wearing the right clothes saying the right things and doing what everyone else is doing.

Commonly, teens are pressured to drink alcohol, smoke and break the law. I for one, have avoided and refrained from them by following a few rules that both my parents and I have gone over. One is that if I am ever in a situation involving drugs or something else that I am uncomfortable with I can call or text my parents or my older brother to pick me up so I don’t get hurt.

I’ve also acquired the skill to think before I act so I can stop and think before I may do something that can change my life forever. So if someone comes up to me and says “ Hey do you want to smoke weed after school?” I can say no by making a good excuse that may even get the person who offered it to me to not smoke also. But obviously that is very rare. Excuses I’ve used before were “Sorry, I have a wrestling match today. Do you want to see it?” or maybe “I’m really not in the mood today. Yo did you see that new movie it looks sick!”

These strategies have constantly worked out for me and I believe will work out positively for me in the near future because as a teen in a world where kids think “doing drugs” is cool. To survive as a teen nowadays you have to be on your toes and not fall into peer pressure.