 George is an 11th grader, and Cindy is his ninth grade sister. They attend their high school football game. Even though they don't even sit together, they both sit on the same side, and they both cheer for the same team, their own team. This is natural, as they are both members of that school. What does it mean to be a member? It means that you have a feeling of belonging, a feeling of being part of some group of people with whom you share something. This is human. It is finding value in belonging, finding value in being an effective member of some larger gathering of people. A student passing through traditional schooling is also a member of a class or general group of students who share a level of personal development, people who are somehow like them and easier to understand than others. The cause of memories gathering is not generally based on an accomplishment, but like friendship it is finding value in each other because there is that shared membership. Membership is something like a diffuse friendship, including many, but without the intensity of value one finds in a personal friend. More intensive personal friendships are generally found with those who are already sharing diffuse membership. This can be an age or maturity, proximity, going to the same school, having the same teachers, or frequenting the same public places. Don and Jenny are a couple in high school but go off to different colleges. Both are Catholic in their religious upbringing and they first met and developed their close relationship while attending as local church. On going to school, Don continues with active church membership while Jenny does not. This is normal human variability, not division. Don finds value in his continuing membership. Jenny redirects her efforts to other forums. She remains a Catholic in belief and attitudes, but no longer practices her faith in church attendance and participation. They get together a few years after graduation and are soon married. And Jenny again attends church because Don does. And when children come, then it is Jenny who again becomes the active member insisting on the benefits of being raised Catholic for her children. This is not an unusual pattern. Young people drifting away as maturing individuals only to reaffirm their membership as family units. We enter or leave membership in accord with our immediate situations. That is both normal and represents a human value in the presence of those who are somehow like us so that we can be comfortable in dealing with them. As a student, membership is socially important but needs to be recognized for its costs and limitations. It is not oriented performance. There is often nothing that is to be accomplished in becoming a member of some group or organization. Yes, members of a Masonic Lodge all have aprons representing a workman's garment, but it is not like there is some real value in having the garment. The value is in being with people who are of a certain attitude, experience, and certain commitments to each other. It is not what you get for being a member that has value, but the membership itself, the invitation to a closer friendship that arises from sharing membership with others. Membership is seen in George and Cindy rooting for the same team because they share membership in a school and that they can share this with other members. It is Don and Jenny choosing to become more active in their church because they are a family with children to raise. It is sharing that has value. For the teenage student, the value is in having clear understanding of the benefits or limits that come with any membership. Many memberships involve commitments and those are a cost that is incurred in order to find a generally higher level of uniformity among members. The value is in making commitments intentionally and intelligently with full realization that membership requirements are to be balanced with benefits. Where parents make their member commitments of younger children, the teenager is increasingly called upon to make their own commitments. It is part of growing into society, part of becoming a human adult. To be effective, there should be a balance of sorts in the number and quality of membership relations that are maintained and having time and energy available for other things of value. There is also value in being productive, seeing to family needs and having reasonable entertainment. Much of where that balance will be found is a matter for personal experience, for trying out memberships, for testing to see how these are somehow sufficient value to step away from other things. As with many such things, it is reasonable to do a lot of that testing and evaluating in teen years where you will have great energy and not fully aware of the needs and wants you will feel compelled to satisfy as an adult.