My mother taught me that “A first impres­sion, can be a last­ing impression”, right before I hit my teenage years.  Ever since, I have tried to keep it in mind.  She also taught me to “act like a lady and remem­ber that every time you go out, you are rep­re­sent­ing your fam­ily”.  This was espe­cially impor­tant to me.  I didn’t want to be seen act­ing out and por­tray­ing my fam­ily as some­thing we’re not.  At a young age, I learned to carry myself with dig­nity, pride, and respect.  Nowa­days, I feel like this mes­sage isn’t being passed on nearly as much as it should be.  I can’t remem­ber how many times I’ve seen a group of teenage girls act­ing out, talk­ing loud, and curs­ing pro­fusely.  Sure I’ve had my times when I would be out with my friends laugh­ing and hav­ing a good time but there were bound­aries.  Some young girls have the men­tal­ity to not care what oth­ers think and that’s good in some cases, but I do believe that you should care about the way you carry your­self and how oth­ers see you.

Teens now may not real­ize it, but the habits they make now can last for­ever.  They can be any­thing from pro­cras­ti­na­tion to being cour­te­ous to some­one.  I know this might sound a lit­tle unheard of for some peo­ple but who knows, that per­son you helped might be your future employer.  In my opin­ion, man­ner­isms and eti­quette can leave the biggest impres­sion on a per­son.  You wouldn’t want to be known as the gross girl who burped and didn’t excuse her­self or the loud mouth who showed no con­cern for the peo­ple around her, that were try­ing to work. These are things that should be taught early on.  They are life lessons that can tran­scend into the future espe­cially for col­lege and careers.  On the job or at col­lege, cour­tesy is expected as one indi­ca­tor of a person’s matu­rity. Treat­ing oth­ers with kind­ness and respect is a mea­sure of a teen’s prepa­ra­tion for adult-type job duties or per­sonal rela­tion­ships.  You want peo­ple to take you and the work you do seri­ously right?

Being a teen myself, and in the com­pany of teens most of the time, I have noticed a lack of man­ners.  A close friend of mine is a cheer­leader.  She told me that twice a week her cheer team took time out of prac­tice for eti­quette classes.  I thought this was very strange, eti­quette class dur­ing cheer­lead­ing prac­tice?  Has our con­cern with man­ners stooped so low that we have to be taught by peo­ple out­side of our homes?  What I’m try­ing to say is teens, espe­cially young women, need to take more respon­si­bil­ity in the way they carry them­selves and the image they put out to their peers.

Here are a few basic man­ner­ism and eti­quette tips I came up with:

1. Say “please” and “thank you”
2. Apol­o­gize, even if you were slightly, partly, or acci­dently in the wrong
3. Say “excuse me”
4. Take pride in your appearance
5. Take pride in what you do
6. Be early/on time
7. Be con­sid­er­ate of others
8. Be pre­pared men­tally and phys­i­cally for any situation
9. Be help­ful
10. Share

Erika Benton-Martin is a senior at El Cer­rito High School and a native of San Fran­cisco, Cal­i­for­nia. After grad­u­a­tion, she plans to relo­cate to Atlanta to attend Clark Atlanta Uni­ver­sity – major­ing in Jour­nal­ism and Broad­cast­ing.  Her goal is to pur­sue a career in either news broad­cast­ing or radio.