My mom is always repeating the same old joke: if your friends all jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too? Of course not. But I
get what she means. She's talking about peer pressure. Teenagers like us live with it every day. Pretty much every kid wants to be liked, to have friends, to be popular. No one wants people to think they aren't cool. While peer pressure is tough, giving in to it and getting in trouble is tougher. But teenagers are still learning to make good decisions. Like this one time my friend Harold wanted to take his dad's prized Jeep Grand Cherokee for a drive. Harold was 13, and he'd never driven a car before. But he figured he knew enough about operating a motor vehicle just by watching his parents drive. When his parents were out of town one weekend, Harold invited me and some of our friends over to his house so he could take us for a drive. I said, "Not me," because I knew it was a stupid thing to do. I told him and everybody else what I thought of the idea. (Driving isn't easy. It took my big brother weeks to get the hang of it.) Harold got mad and told me I was being a chicken. I said, "I'd rather be a chicken than get in an accident and have a broken leg."
What is the thesis statement of this passage?
He knew enough about operating a motor vehicle just by watching his parents drive.
While peer pressure is tough, giving in to it and getting in trouble is tougher.
Driving isn't easy. It took my big brother weeks to get the hang of it.
Answer: B) While peer pressure is tough, giving in to it and getting in trouble is tougher.
Explanation: A thesis is an idea or theory that is expressed as a statement and is discussed in a logical way. When writing or speaking, a thesis statement is a statement that occurs at the end of the introduction, after the background information on the topic. In the given passage we can see that the author introduces the topic by explaining something that his mother used to tell him, and then he writes the thesis statement at the end of the introduction: While peer pressure is tough, giving in to it and getting in trouble is tougher.
Charlie, and the reader as well, both begin to have an inkling that his intelligence may not be permanent as he listens to Dr. Nemur's presentation in "Progress Report 13." Charlie even realizes that Nemur did not take into account his rapid rise in intelligence, and that now, Charlie may even regress into a lower IQ than before the experiment.
