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 friends…Before I graduated the process of… selecting the college, which one to go to. I wasn’t sure. I had no information on any of that, so I went to someone that graduated the year before at some of the colleges I was thinking about going to. I talked to them and they helped me.”
“Through campus newsletters.”
“High school taught me to socialize. High school also taught me that I can deal with anything for a little while. Now I know when things get stressful, I can tough it out. High school really made me see how tedious and inconsequential most things in life are.”
“We get dual credits…if we want them, otherwise, [going to YV-Tech is] just kind of like a thing we do for fun because we have enough credits already.”
“Some of the barriers I foresee have a lot to do with being a working mom. It can be difficult to balance being a devoted mother and wanting to excel in your career because, in my opinion, the role of a mother always wins out as the priority.”
“I think I am shy, and it gets in the way. I don’t like participating in conversation. Sorry. I am not a very good leader to do that stuff, and I think that is why. Because I am not confident in what I say.”
“I agree with being adaptable. My mother used to tell me I was bipolar and stuff like that, and people used to tell me I’m fake. But it’s more so like being able to change and adjust to the people you’re around because not everyone can deal with certain personality types. And you don’t always want drama so you just need to change just a little bit, not being a whole different person but just being able to understand who you’re around and how you should be and whatnot.”
“Through school.”
“Over thoughtful, impatient, fast pace, self-reserved, athletic, original. Nobody can be like me, so it is me.”
“I think that like now I’m kind of like thinking like when I see somebody in the street, like we’re all similar, but at the same time, we’re all different. Like I just noticed, we all have like a lot of similarities just in terms of our mindsets. But at the same time, like we have different lives, obviously. We have different circumstances, situations. So like that kind of it’s going to make me like think more…maybe [about] talking to more people because like maybe I grow by that because I grew from this conversation alone.”