"Saturday Climbing" by W.D. Valgardson

6. The father metaphoricaly suggests that his daughter may face obstacles in her life which he never had to face. What obstacles do you think people your age may have to overcome which were not present in your parents' generation?

"Once, when she deviated from the route her father had taken, she became stuck at an overhang. Not having dealt with the obstacle himself, Barry could not help and had to leave her to find her own solution."

In our parents' days, there weren't that many challenging or risky obstacles to face. In our days, there are many things that we have to be careful of, and there are also many things that we have to overcome, which were not present in our parents' generation. Some of these things, include technology, friends, and the environment.

Technology is one of the biggest things on this earth that can be an advantage, or a disadvantage. We have different sites for social activity such as Facebook and other chatrooms, MSN for online instant messaging conversations, and even cell phones with internet and text messaging. All of these things help you keep in touch with one another in a good way, buh in another way, all of these things can lead to great harm. Technology becomes a disadvantage when someone posts pictures of you on the internet that you don't want to be seen, or when someone writes something about you on the internet for everyone to see or comment on. However, our parents didn't really go through any of that because internet was used mostly for research back then and perhaps some of them didn't really have computers to begin with.

Friends could also put you through obstacles that your parents may have never faced in their childhood. Back in our parents' days, they wouldn't even be able to hang out with friends all the time, so they barely got to talk. They had strict curfews, and most likely had friends that grew up with them, and perhaps the same way as they did. These days, kids don't really listen to their parents and they grow up the way they want to grow up, and do the things they want to do regardless of whether it's bad for them or not. This leads to facing obstacles such as your relationship with your boyfriend, or a dilemma between you and your best friend, or even a dispute between family and relatives.

Last but not least, environment plays a role in the difference between our generation and our parents' generation. Normally the environment you grow up in would determine at least a bit of how you grow up to be, if not all. The environment includes going to school, and teens in our generation face a lot of problems going to school. These problems could be things like not making friends, being bullied, or having to face an enemy everyday. In our parents' days though, school was a place to learn and it was a place where teachers were strict and had high expectations of students. In class, students weren't really allowed to interact with one another because of discipline so therefore you wouldn't really have been talking to your friends in school at all except for lunch time. Because of that, if there isn't much communication, there isn't going to be many arguments.

Technology becomes more advanced, friends become unexpected, and the environment pulls you into its wonders of sorrow and happiness. Everyone has to go through some form of hardship in different ways, and this is how our generation differs from our parents' generation.