Welcome to the Striving to Thriving Youth Quote Library. Here you’ll find a curated collection of more than 5,700 quotes from young people ages 15-22 living in communities across the United States. In the library you can see how young people describe their multifaceted identities, how they understand and apply meaning to language around job, work and career, how they think about and assign value to relationships, networking and connections, and their future goals and the education and career choices they believe will lead them there. You can also view additional notes on curation, categories and filters.
“My mom would buy me supplies because I would always like to draw like on the walls or tables. She let me draw whatever and if I would ask, she would buy me stuff like crayons, pencils and paint. She started the whole thing and then my cousin for the firefighter and then TV. I would always watch people save other people, so that would encourage me because I like helping people.”
“Tiredness.”
“Hours.”
“If I die, obviously, I can’t run my own business, can’t live my life. Another one was body injury. With bodybuilding, typically, if you get injured, especially [if] it’s your knee or your back, your career is pretty much shot because you can’t perform correctly…Family injury, I know a lot of people who have been on the same path, and their wife accidently got killed or their kids or something like that, and it does put a toll on someone psychologically about how they’re going to plan the rest of their life.”
“I know this might seem small, but like making lists. Like I make lists a lot, so I feel like this is the thing that helps me, and then just like balancing what I want and what I need.”
“As we come to an end, I am begin[ning] to realize how some of these negative or positive experience[s] kind of shape and mold our belief system and mindset and how [I] perceive and view life. It’s really mind-blowing!”
“Like they love like, because it’s like cutting hair is like an art, basically. So they love, like they’re artists, just like a musician. They’re creating an art and cutting hair, so they love to do that. And it’s like they’re creating something that they love to do.”
“Like people that, well, it’s always people in your life that they say they’re your friends, but they do that. They criticize everything you do. Why are you doing that? Uh-uh. What you? Yeah…They’re like honest, but they bring it over to another side like it’s very negative, and they kind of hurt your pride a little bit. Like it hurts you on the inside, but you don’t let them know that because, okay, we friends. Okay. Yeah. We do this. Yeah, that’s my friend. We do this. Like we honest with each other. But it’s like why? Like why it hurting me on the inside, so should I just…”
“If anything, I do feel as though there are bias (whether unconscious or not) that may exist once I check the box identifying myself as African American. Perhaps even some when I select that I am female.”
“Because for career, most of the time you trying to get a good career, you have to have a certain set of skills. Like you have to go to college or been in high school for like, you have to have your high school diploma or your associate degree, bachelor’s degree, something like that.”