“I hate this! Everything stinks! Life is so unfair!”

Sound familiar? If you’re younger than 20 and older than 11, it probably does. It seems like teenagers these days can't complete a single day without some sort of lament about the so-called atrocities of life. Our parents have told us a million times that we are still inexperienced, that we will encounter a lot of problems more difficult than those of algebra and teenage social drama, but many of us remain stubbornly unconvinced.

A lot of teenagers don't need to experience sickness or death to feel mistreated. Instead, their idea of tragedy is when someone overlooks some inconsequential detail – like when a friend fails to say hello in the corridor at school or their mother forgets to cut the crust off their sandwich – and their lives come crumbling down like one of those piles of rubble in our much-hated history texts.

Personally, I think life is great.

As teenagers, we are at one of the best stages of our lives. We are only responsible for ourselves. We don’t face the tests of time that adults do. We have a million choices, unlike adults who are trapped by their obligations and responsibilities. Our lives are only as complicated as we make them.

We still live with our parents, who do our laundry, pay our bills, feed us and come rescue us from our mad hatter schemes. Sounds like utopia to me.

We are still young, gorgeous and without aches in our bones, but the best part is that we are still a long way away from getting wrinkly hands, hearing aids and a walking stick. We are at the last stage in our lives when we will actually be happy to hear that the phone is for us.

Even after so much sound advice, many people will ask me, isn’t creating drama what being a teen is all about? To a teen is every emotion is multiplied times ten, a teen conforms yet is rebellious, always obeys but somehow is still an outlaw, always talks but is never ever heard.

I say, get over it.

Shehzareen Haider, age 15