“Well Siri, I think you’re ready for your test.”
This is what my driving instructor told me when I shifted the Toyota into park outside Belmont Driving School. Her expression was cheerful; mine was one of mild shock, considering that in the last hour, I had almost rolled through a stop sign, scraped the curb on a right turn, and driven over the median of an intersection. After the experiences of the past hour, the last place I wanted to be was behind the wheel of a car. The last thing I felt ready for was a driving test.
Later, I understood that my instructor was likely trying to build up my confidence for the test and get me excited at the thought of achieving a major goal for many teens: getting their driver’s license.
There’s nothing a parent dreads more than the thought of their teenager behind the wheel of a two-ton machine. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we love the idea of driving. It forces parents to grant us some autonomy and show they have faith in us.
Driving has long been a rite of passage for teens. It’s a chance to take on new responsibilities and gain the freedom to go anywhere, at any time. In the past, teens living in towns like Belmont had limited ways to get around, so a driver’s license represented the ultimate ticket to freedom. Nowadays, however, is driving on our own really as freeing when we’ve been taking Uber, the T, or the bus for years?
For many teens, going through the long process of getting their license seems unnecessary when friends are just a FaceTime call or a 10-minute walk away. I’ve never had the feeling that I was confined at home or couldn’t get to where I wanted to go. Also, teens in Belmont live in a walkable town and in close proximity to a major city — making a car largely unnecessary. Don’t get me wrong, I want to get my driver’s license, but I’ve never seen it as a major life goal. These days, a driver’s license is not a must-have but rather a nice-to-have for many teens.
There’s still something exciting about the possibility of going places, like the Seaport holiday market on a snowy night or to a friend’s house across town for a late-night drive. Even for those who don’t have regular access to a car, the idea that you might plan a summer road trip to the Cape with friends or a ride to school on a rainy morning is thrilling. Some of my best memories are of driving aimlessly around Belmont with my sister or friends with no destination in mind, just listening to music and talking. A driver’s license, then, is as much about the idea of freedom as it is about freedom itself.
Each time I sit behind the wheel of my parents’ Volvo or the driving school Toyota, I feel increasingly nervous. It seems absurd that I should be trusted to maneuver a car. Yet, as I practice, I see that learning to drive — aside from causing the occasional heart attack for my passengers — is an important experience for me. I’ve learned to focus and have found that my turns were smoothest and my backing up straightest when I felt confident.
That’s something people my age struggle with, whether it be in school, sports, or social situations. The experience of learning to drive, aside from being an unavoidable task at our age, gives teens the feeling that they do, in fact, have unlimited abilities and the confidence to master something that once seemed foreign and exceptionally complex. As I prepare to take my test in the near future, I remind myself that I’d spent more than 40 hours behind the wheel — so what’s another six minutes?
Siri Iagnemma is a junior at Belmont High School. She writes about Gen Z for The Voice.