Our society makes it increasingly difficult for teenage writers, artists and musicians to get their work out into the public and to have their voices heard. This discrimination against high school students comes from the belief that the works of younger members of the community are not as important as the works of someone older and supposedly more educated. It is true that people learn more as they grow older, but what makes the life experiences of a forty year old more valuable than those of a sixteen year old? Do adults really believe that all teenagers have no sense of what it’s like to be in the “real world,” that the only things we care about are popularity, dating and going to the mall? We have experiences, too. We see the kids in our school getting torn apart by drug abuse, depression and domestic violence. We experience it ourselves, yet there are still more fictional novels written by adults than nonfiction novels written by teens recounting the struggles we have to face every day.

As a result of this unfair prejudice, writers like me and my friends are turned away from newspapers and writing contests and are forced to seek out spots in teen-only publications. My friends who are passionate about art can’t sell a painting because the average person who walks by their table at an art fair won’t take them seriously. When will people learn that you don’t have to be a college graduate to write well?