There’s something eternally captivating about American high schools. The unparalleled level of drama, the personalized lockers, the crushes and the enemies, the cheerleaders and football players, the good teachers and the bad ones, and of course, the highly anticipated prom night that is the quintessential moment marking the end of an era known as American adolescence.
But have you ever wondered how much exactly this cliche picture of American sophomore year is true? What if in reality, Mean Girls, Juno, and Superbad were nothing more than Hollywood fiction that masterfully manipulated our sense of nostalgia?
In order to find the answers, it’s best to ask people who have been there and done that. So when someone asked Americans “How true are ‘American high school movies’ compared to real-life high school?” people immediately took the opportunity to share their experiences.
#1
I remember one time in school, I was walking down the hall with my books in my arms. A random bully ran down the hall and slapped them down, hard, sending all my stuff flying everywhere.
In a movie, everyone would point and laugh. In movies, that sort of obvious bullying of a nerd would be treated as funny and normal.
In reality, the other kids gasped, and a few random kids stopped and helped me gather up my things. I remember one girl saying, “That was so mean.”
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#2
IRL there are far fewer 35 y.o. HS students.
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#3
Not all popular people are mean, I was friends with a popular girl in my sophomore year and she was super kind/sweet to everybdoy
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#4
A weird thing is how they seemingly show it as if kids just have time to talk and chat in the middle of the day in the hallway by their lockers when in reality you’re booking it across the building because you have 5 minutes to go from the first floor, get to your locker on the second floor, and then run all the way across the 3rd floor to your 3rd period class.
Also dunno about y’all but I got only 25 minutes for lunch in HS, so nobody was milling about during lunch either in the halls.
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#5
No one cares that much about the “popular” group of students, most people just mind their own business if they aren’t with their friends.
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#6
In real life, the popular kids are popular because they’re likable. The mean girls and bully jocks are not popular.
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#7
No family eats breakfast together before school/work.
Another user added:
And nobody goes out for a big sit down breakfast before school, either.
I remember laughing because The OC always showed the characters going out for a nice breakfast in a restaurant before class, as if teenagers get up that early.
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#8
Everyone is tired all the time because we have to wake up at like 6:30am to get to school on time.
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#9
most are also not in their mid 20’s and driving BMW’s and Range Rovers, etc.
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#10
Friend groups are more porous than they make. For instance, there were football players that also acted in school plays, or wrestlers also in the math club.
The bullying is less dramatic. Nobody is actually getting locked in a locker.
We did actually use those red cups at parties that you always see in movies, my non-American friends were always shocked when I told them that.
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#11
Only California and other warm states have campuses where you walk outdoors between classes. In most US schools, you don’t leave the building.
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#12
The fact that Superbad spent a whole movie trying to obtain alcohol is totally realistic. We absolutely had whole evening adventures trying to get booze. The Hawaii driver’s license was definitely a thing in the mid 1990s. California IDs had holograms earlier and couldn’t be faked anymore. Several people at school at fake Hawaii IDs back then. I’m sure one of the writers must be my age from CA.
I watched this movie with an ex (South American) and he was confused because they all just bought booze from the tiendas when they were like 13.
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#13
Prom is way less of a big deal in real life. Kids look forward to it and get dressed up, a few might do the limo thing. But it’s not the end-all be-all of the high school student’s year. And really no one cares who wins prom queen.
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#14
I went to high school (obviously) and teach at a high school, all in the United States. I went to a suburban school in California and teach at a small town school also in California. Here are my observations.
Things foreigners often think are fake that are real:
-sports are connected to school. There are people who wear uniforms on game days, there are rallies, and there are school rivalries. They aren’t usually as serious as depicted on shows, but they are real.
-cheerleaders do exist. They wear uniforms on game days as well (not everyday.)
-yellow school buses exist (where I teach they bring students in who live in the country. Kids who live in town walk, drive, or get dropped off.) (Red and other color plastic cups also exist, as a side note.)
-some kids really do have cars at that age. Most probably can at least drive.
-“student government” or “student body president” is often a real thing, but it has little power. Basically just a student committee to rubber-stamp whatever the administration is going to do anyway.
Things foreigners often think are common that are fake or exaggerated:
-being a cheerleader or an athlete are not nearly as exclusive as depicted, nor do they automatically equate to popularity.
-cliques are far more fluid than depicted. Rarely do they automatically center around one activity (like football or band or chess club.) It’s not at all uncommon for people to do a lot of different activities that blend stereotypes (like a football player who is a chess club officer and in student government.)
-bullying is rarely anything like it’s depicted. It’s rarely done in front of everyone with bystanders not caring. It’s more common to be done in secret, and to focus on emotional rather than physical bullying (although physical bullying does happen.) I think movies and shows are trying to capture what it *feels* like (that no one is there to help you) and missing what it actually looks like in reality.
-everything is way more boring and less dramatic than depicted. Fiction requires conflict and so tv shows and movies create it even where it probably wouldn’t actually happen.
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#15
if the school is supposed to be in a major city, hardly anyone in HS has a car
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#16
Speaking just for my school, not even close. Bullying is never as obvious as it is in movies (nobody dumps their tray on anyone or purposefully trips the new kid, actually most people are pretty friendly), most of the teachers and the principal are well- liked, there aren’t well- defined cliques (nerdy group, jocks, cheerleaders, etc.) but there are large friend groups that intertwine and overlap and there is definitely drama. They do get active shooter drills and the amount of drugs/ smoking/ vaping right, though. Also, crazy, entitled parents.
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#17
The lockers are huge on tv and they’re all at eye level.
I remember getting to high school and being disappointed we had these cubby-sized lockers stacked on top of each other, and they were in the most inconvenient places around the school.
So there was no leisurely chatting with your best pal whose locker was right next to yours. And not nearly enough space to decorate your locker with photos and mirrors like a bedroom.
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#18
If you’ve seen the show Euphoria, it’s basically exactly not like that at all
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#19
You’ve seen the “actual” vs “advertised” for fast food burgers, right? America knows how to make a commercial.
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#20
We didn’t have the paddling or any of that (and it was decades later) but the vibe of Dazed & Confused was pretty true of my experience – cliques were not really that well-defined, ‘nerds’ and ‘stoners’ and ‘jocks’ all crossing over and mixing together in various ways.
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#21
Not very true. Life is more boring day in and day out. Poeple are also definetely more serious about school if you live in a well populated area
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#22
We had 2:30 in between class periods. We did not have time to lean against the lockers and talk. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it snows, sometimes the wind blows; we had to go to school then too. In the winter it was very cold, in the summer it was unbearably hot. I bet they’ve fixed that because the expensive electronics would cook themselves. A school didn’t need anything like that when they built the building. Usually there was some construction crew outside banging and hammering on something. There was no restaurant that we all hung out in. We did mob a pizza place a few times after the dances. They got mad because their employees were too busy, they didn’t make enough money off of us and because the old people buying expensive food couldn’t get through us. We caused numerous major traffic jams because we kept crossing the street. The cops showed up to direct traffic. The pizza place complained. The police went to the school and they told our parents that we had to stop. They let kept the rec center open later for us instead. They actually did put on a really good after party for the middle school dances after that. They just herded us all into there and told us we’d need to go home if we left or we’d get into trouble.
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