The Growing Pains of Jonathan Krohn Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times Jonathan Krohn has transformed himself from a buttoned-up conservative wunderkind in suits and ties into a shaggy young adult in untucked shirts, as pictured here recently in Washington Square Park. It's almost a job requirement for a 13-year-old to do things that will make him cringe as an 18-year-old. Some regret a death-metal phase, others a Bieber haircut. Jonathan Krohn says that his big embarrassment is his stint as a conservative pundit. In his early teens, Mr. Krohn wrote a book titled "Define Conservatism" and made a speech at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference that caught fire. He was courted by Fox News, mentored by William Bennett and anointed "the future of conservatism." A frequent cable-news guest and Tea Party speaker appearing in sweater vests or suits and ties, he was called Alex P. Keaton, Lil" Limbaugh, the Little Mr. Conservative (in a headline with a 2009 article in these pages), Urkel, a Muppet and Doogie Howser, G.O.P. But Mr. Krohn, it turned out, was a work in progress, and by this spring his transformation seemed nearly total: from a buttoned-up kid to a shaggy young adult with facial scruff and untucked shirts; from a golfer to a lover of art films; from a home-schooled Christian living in Duluth, Ga., to a secular New York University freshman in the East Village. Most jarring of all, he renounced his earlier political beliefs. The turnabout made him something of a pariah among conservatives (Mr. Bennett now declines to discuss him) and ruptured his family. "I started reflecting on a lot of what I wrote, just thinking about what I had said and what I had done," Mr. Krohn told Politico last summer. He said he came to believe that "it was naïve," that he was "a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time." He added that from now on "I want to be Jonathan Krohn, and I'm tired of being an ideology." Twitter erupted with contempt. The Daily Caller posted three articles, one of which had an anonymous source calling Mr. Krohn a bathroom vulgarity. But by far the most painful reaction came at home, where his parents were in the process of divorcing. There were near-constant arguments with Mr. Krohn's father, Doug Krohn, a computer scientist. "My dad didn't really like me not having conservative views and not agreeing with him on a lot of things," Jonathan Krohn said carefully. He got very upset about that. Sitting at Ess-a-Bagel on First Avenue in mid-March, two weeks after his 18th birthday, chewing on an everything bagel and occasionally pausing to wipe schmears of cream cheese from his stubble, Mr. Krohn said that his mother, Marla Krohn, a manufacturer's sales representative and sometime actress, has always been more encouraging - though he stressed that she was never anything like the stage mother that some had assumed. Although her son's political switch was hard for her, she said by phone, "I love him, and I support him in whatever he chooses to do." Between classes in political science and international relations, he has written articles for The Atlantic's Web site, Salon, Mother Jones and Rudaw, a Kurdish news site. His new mentor is Josh Marshall, the chief executive and editor of Talking Points Memo, which has posted articles on the before-and-after versions of Mr. Krohn. "Josh told me you've got to find things you're passionate about, because nobody's going to hire anybody who doesn't have knowledge of a particular subject and doesn't show passion," Mr. Krohn said. He hopes that his straight reporting can obliterate his mini-pundit years. "I'd like to get a staff job," he said, "so I can just write and write and write and write and write every day and bury that under everything." While Mr. Krohn's professional freelance efforts so far have been remarkable for a college freshman, his attempts to bury his past have occasionally faltered. Rule of thumb: Whenever a new kid emerges on the political scene - say, the Indiana 13-year-old who recently drew attention for calling Rush Limbaugh's show to affirm that man-made global warming is a hoax - a tweet about "the next @JonathanLKrohn" isn't far behind. In response, Mr. Krohn tweeted: "What is the statute of limitations on me being a punchline? Two? Three? Four? Five more years? After a mostly cordial experience covering the National Review Institute Summit for The Atlantic in January, his return in March to the Conservative Political Action Conference, the scene of his breakout speech at 13, was unnerving. During a loud but friendly hallway argument with Jamie Weinstein, of The Daily Caller - Mr. Krohn had found comments by the former attorney general Michael B. Mukasey to be "extremely racist" toward Muslims - 10 or so bloggers, mostly from Breitbart.com, circled him and began questioning him about his then-and-now politics. "Two people mocked his clothes," wrote Chris Moody of Yahoo! News, "and one cursed at him. Krohn cursed right back.  Mr. Weinstein tried several times to get them to lay off. Toward the end of the confrontation, one woman suggested that he go get an education: "I would like to recommend "Atlas Shrugged," " she said.