We all grow up reading and watching coming-of-age movies and books and thinking to ourselves, “I can’t wait to do that when I’m in high school!” or, “Oh no, I hope that doesn’t happen to me in high school.” Now that I’m almost all the way through high school, every so often I find myself thinking, “This is just like that show,” or, “This didn’t happen in that book.” Everybody has different experiences throughout their high school years, and their opinions on whether high school is like the movies will differ from mine, but these were my personal experiences.
Unfortunately, there were no mysterious families of vampires like in Twilight. At least, none that I met. Twilight taught me that high school would be full of angst, vampires, werewolves, and rain. Given that Forks isn’t that far away from Forest Grove, the rain part came true, and the mind-numbing angst. Not so much the vampires and werewolves. In all seriousness, though, I experienced a lot of similarities to Bella in Twilight and Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower because of how often they were in their own heads. When I first became a freshman, I was surrounded by friends all the time, always laughing and getting to know this new environment with them. Sophomore year, I didn’t have as many friends that I cut it up with at school, and found myself having to spend more time by myself in my head. Now, right before graduation, I hardly find myself talking to anyone at all. I have so much time in my head to analyze and overthink things I shouldn’t have time to think about, but after having so many conversations about the reality of real life after high school, college, student loans, money, and all of that. Time to just sit and think is my saving grace. So, the movies at least got that right.
Sex. It’s a part of all the coming-of-age teen shows and movies, and usually depicts crazy love triangles, or octagons, of everyone dating and sleeping with each other. That’s not what really happens, at least it didn’t happen to me. Sure, two people may have a crush on the same person, and yes, one person is going to think someone else is trying to take the person they’re dating, and yes, people are going to sleep with multiple people. Honestly, most of it is just rumors, but it really isn’t as big a part of daily life as the movies make it seem. Truthfully, people don’t go around openly talking about sex. Well, sure, sex is discussed given the required health classes we all take, but not many people are airing out their business of who they’re gettin’ frisky with. I think the shows and movies got the rumors and secrets right; Nobody knows how to keep a secret anymore! This may be why “risky scandals” haven’t been a huge deal during my high school experience – nobody wants to talk about anything if they know the whole school will hear about it. While on the topic – teen pregnancy. Such a taboo topic, even after popular shows and movies like The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Glee, and Juno depict it. All three of those shows and movies show different sides of teen pregnancy, the struggles of being a child about to have a child, the isolation from peers, the acceptance and union of peers, parents’ reactions, raising a child as a teenager, giving a child up for adoption, etc. I’ve known a few girls who were pregnant or already had children since I’ve been in high school. I’m glad to say that the teenage mothers I’ve known have all been successful as far as school goes and have done really well for themselves and their children.
A lot of my favorite movies and shows about high school have included a storyline about drugs and alcohol. The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Euphoria both depict a lot about drugs, from smoking weed to harder drugs that you can overdose on, and alcohol habits and addiction. In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Charlie tries smoking weed, LSD, and drinking alcohol as a way of fitting in with his friends and coping with intense emotions. In Euphoria, it seems that the characters, specifically Rue, are doing every drug under the sun. Depending on whether you see this as fun or sad, drugs are honestly everywhere, at least the last couple of years that I’ve been in high school. I wouldn’t say I’ve heard of more than a few people doing anything worse than smoking weed, but given that we’re in Oregon, weed is really easy for a couple of high school students to get their hands on. Every time you walk into the bathroom, you see a group of students huddled together, passing around something, either weed or a vape, walking into classrooms or down the hallway, you can see which students have red eyes or have that “lights are on but nobody’s home” look on their faces, and you can smell it coming from lots of peoples’ backpacks or clothes. I can’t speak for my peers as to why they do drugs. Fun, coping, appetite, peer pressure, I’m not quite sure. Honestly, with high school being the roller coaster that it was, it was hard not to give in sometimes! The same things happen with alcohol. I remember my brother, who graduated from Forest Grove years ago, telling me that people would steal alcohol from their parents and pour it into half-empty Coca-Colas they got from the vending machine. Even since I’ve been in high school, I’ve overheard people talking about how much they drank over the weekend. I’ve even seen someone take a shot in the bathroom! Again, since I can’t speak for my peers, I don’t know why this is happening. I just know that it is.
Something I’ve noticed about my favorite movies about high school students is that they never seem to nail what I’ve dealt with as far as mental health goes. The Perks of Being a Wallflower has probably gotten the closest. Bear with me here, I’m being way more transparent than I would normally be in the school newspaper, but since it’s my last article, I’m not too worried about it. I can say that while it may not be on-the-nose for me since Charlie’s mental health issues are rooted in childhood sexual assault, The Perks of Being a Wallflower sums up the mental health obstacles that I and a lot of my peers have dealt with in high school pretty well. Charlie is shown sitting alone a lot, experiencing dissociation, and having “meltdowns” that he doesn’t know how to deal with, and scares those around him. It’s almost like he can’t escape his brain, and that’s what he’s struggling with most. I can relate a lot to Charlie. I’ve had my ups and downs, but as disappointing as it is looking back, I feel like during a lot of high school, I was in the “downs”. Isolating myself from friends and family, I never wanted to talk to my family. I would go to school and then come home from school and leave my bedroom to do chores, eat, or use the bathroom. It’s not like I was doing homework or a hobby or anything. Truthfully, I would sit in my bed for hours, overwhelmed by my own brain. I think this resulted in a lot of dissociation or not really being “all the way there” while at school. Most of the time, I’m on a one-track mind – pretend to listen to the teacher and then do the assignments. And then, when I would least expect it, when I thought I was finally feeling better and that I was handling everything, I would snap. Full-on meltdown. At the end of these yelling, crying, hyperventilating fits, where I felt like I was going to explode, all that I was left with was a worried mom and a face covered in snot. I know others relate to this, even if they don’t want to admit it, if they are like me and would come to school the day after these “freak outs” and be all smiles and schoolwork. Maybe it was just my friends, but I never really got to talk about it with anyone. I mean, my friends have always been in tune with each other and what one another is going through, but we never really had conversations about it or comforted each other. Teachers never seemed to notice either. I was always sort of jealous of the students they pulled aside to ask if everything was alright. But who am I to be upset by this when all I ever did was put on my best smile and nod my head throughout their lessons? They can’t read my mind, so why should I have expected them to? It’s a little easier to talk about other people’s experiences with drugs and sex and dating than it is about mental health because that experience is unique to every single person, but that was my mine.
I know I’m referring to The Perks of Being a Wallflower a lot, but it’s just one of my favorites, and the coming-of-age movie I resonate with the most. Something that stands out to me in both TPOBAW and Dead Poets Society is “the teacher.” In The Perks of Being a Wallflower, it was Mr. Anderson who famously delivered the line: “We accept the love we think we deserve”, which, in my experience, turns out to be true. In Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating inspires his students to “seize the day.” As a child in elementary and middle school, I dreamed of having a teacher like that, whom I was inspired by, and genuinely wanted insight from. I’m lucky enough to have had my Mr. Anderson, Mr. Keating, and Miss Honey all combined into one teacher. As cliche as it might sound, Ms. Nelson is the gift that never stops giving. Not only have I benefited greatly and found the direction I might want to go in life in her classes, but I also found a teacher whom I felt really connected to. Now that graduation is three weeks away, I can’t stop thinking to myself that I wish I had asked her for more advice or more about her experiences, or confided in her more, just to know that there was someone on my team. She’s never once put me in a bad mood and has even been able to pull me out of bad moods caused by other teachers. And she does all of this without even knowing it! I wish I had expressed more gratitude towards her because I don’t think she knows the extent of the impact she’s had on me. I’m really going to miss her after graduation, and I’m really grateful that now I know exactly what it feels like to have “the teacher”.
I’m not going to waste your time leaving this on a fake positive note about how “high school is great like in the movies too!” or “these are the best years of your life!” I’m also not going to give you mind-numbing advice about high school you’ve heard endless times before. The only thing I wish to be taken away from this account of actual high school versus movie high school is that each and every person is going to experience high school differently. Some are going to peak (unfortunately), some are going to barely make it to graduation, some are going to relate to the movies and shows, and some are not. Be comfortable with the idea that high school is going to happen, or has already happened, and it will end. You’re going to experience hundreds of things throughout your life, and you’ll be a different person during each one. Enjoy high school, and if you can’t, you just have to make it to graduation. And, don’t believe everything you see on TV.
