I grew up watching movies with my family every night and a theme that seemed to occur a lot in these movies was high school. When I was younger I always dreamed of being older and walking down the halls of my high school and it being just like the movies. With the diverse cliques, parties every night, young teen romance and self-discovery. Now that I am almost finished with my first year of high school I thought I would reflect and try and answer the age old question, is high school really like the movies?

Well, first of all there’s not really set groups of cliques. Sure there is a more sporty group or a more artsy group but most people get along with each other. There’s not this big bad group of popular kids that pick on the nerds and  get away with whatever they want. Nobody really cares what your background is, if you’re a nice person with similar interests, odds are you’ll end up being great friends.

Secondly there is not parties every night, mostly nights are filled with homework and binge watching your favorite show on netflix. Teen movies like to leave out the part about the stacks of homework you’ll receive every night. High school is definitely not this glamorous social event that last for four years of your life. Instead it’s staying up until 3 a.m. writing a history paper, reading a 500 page book about some topic that you couldn’t care less about, trying to get answers to the eight page long packet that’s due tomorrow and praying your 80 won’t go down to a 79 overnight. Of course there are still parties but they’re not these huge ragers you always see with kids swinging from chandeliers and diving into pools from roofs. Mostly they are a handful of kids in a basement, all with phones in hands and blaring generic pop music that nobody really knows the words to.

Now for the teen romance, it’s hard for me to weigh in on this topic since I haven’t had a lot of real experiences yet but it’s hard for me to believe my soul mate is sitting in the desk next to me. One thing they do leave out is the uncomfortable PDA that plagues the hallway during every four minute passing time. Teen romance is portrayed as this beautiful thing but I beg to differ when I have to pass by that one couple that’s quickly jamming their tongues down each other’s throats before they have to go to math. Also, for the most part, it’s hard to hold a steady relationship now-a-days. A big thing currently is the “side-hoe” trend, where it’s cool to be talking to multiple people at once. It’s rare to find a couple that is really committed to each other and last for longer than a month.

Fortunately not everything in these movies are a lie. If there is one thing that they truthfully portray is that high school is a time to discover yourself. Maybe go through an emo phase, or whatever phase  you’re into that year. Our teenage years are for growing up, making up your own opinions and ideas, and more often than not, making mistakes. In high school you learn a lot of things like the quadratic formula and the meaning behind to kill a mockingbird. But you also learn what kind of person you want to be. No matter what high school you go to there will always be different kinds of people with different stories and interests. And to me that’s the most important thing.

In conclusion, high school is not like the movies and instead is more of this thing that everyone groans about. Even though they did give me a false hope that my teenage years will be the craziest years of my life, it did teach me that growing and changing is okay. And that’s the most important lesson, I think. Sometimes you can feel guilty for not being the same person you were when you first walked into high school. Especially when old friends tell you things like, “Oh, you’ve changed.” Well thank god I changed because the person I used to be hadn’t gone through the things I have now and the person I used to be was naive. And I will always be changing and I will always be naive in certain areas but that’s okay. So I want to say thank you to all of the cheesy high school movies like the breakfast club and even mean girls. Thank you for teaching me that I’m never going to be the same person, and that’s more than okay.  

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