As we look forward to 2025, I am honored to share some teens’ New Year’s resolutions. I began this tradition in 2005, the first year I wrote the column Ask Mary Jo, and I am pleased to offer young people’s voices again. Astrid, 17: I want to be true and honest with myself. I want to work ...
Q. I’ve been home from college three days, and I already know this isn’t going to be what I expected. I love my university and I’m so busy there that this is my first visit home. I stayed at school over Thanksgiving. I love my family, but this is so weird. I feel like I don’t have a ...
Q. I overheard my mom and my uncle talking. I wasn’t supposed to be there. They said this may be the last Christmas we’ll have with my grandma. She must be really sick. Since I heard them, I can’t think of anything else. My grandma is the best person I know. No one else makes me feel so ...
Q. My best friend since kindergarten is no longer my friend. I don’t know what I did. She won’t talk to me. What do I do? –13-year-old Mary Jo’s Response: I do wish this wasn’t ...
Q. My gram died. This is the first death I’ve understood. My pap died when I was four, but I don’t really remember it. My gram meant a great deal to me. I would go to her house when I didn’t get along with my sisters. I’m the middle child and the only boy, so that happened a lot. She ...
In honor of Banned Book Week 2024 (Sept. 22-28), I’m looking back at a poignant question posed to me two years ago by a 16-year-old. A Tennessee school district had just voted to ban Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel “Maus” about the Holocaust due to “inappropriate ...
