“High school will be the best time of your life,” “Soak up everything you can from the four years,” “High School was the good days.” Many believe that high school was fun and a great experience but was it the best time of their lives…? Debatable.
“Being a senior is so overrated because we don’t even get any privileges,” senior Basil Hwaira said. “There is no open campus, and it’s just not all that.”
With high school comes the long-lived football games, proms, homecomings, formals, pep rallies, jocks, and everything in between.
“I have to go to homecoming, it’s homecoming, everybody goes, you can’t miss it. It is definitely not all they make it out to be.” sophomore Logan Thomas said.
The very famous show, High School Musical, contains many stereotypes around those four years. The movie summarizes the popular, super cute, athlete who falls in love with the super smart, pretty girl. The two begin dating and, of course, the mean popular girl tries to break them up.
“I feel like what I saw on TV shows was very exaggerated and not real life compared to high school,” freshman Kali Fancher said.
There have been generations of movies produced with a similar plot: Clueless (1955) The Breakfast Club (1985) 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) Mean Girls (2004). There is obviously drama in any school, but the amount of it may not be all that much. Popularity is a huge focus of those productions, but many actually believe the “popularity contest” died down from middle school to high school.
There are other influences that make students feel they have to live up to because they are popular on social media or because “everyone else does it.” Many fall around seniors such as senior sunrise, senior assassin, senior skip day, and senior pranks. While the activities can be fun, some think they are overrated and end up causing disputes.
Senior assassin is a “fun” game that many look forward to when they become a senior. Through social media, senior assassin tends to look a lot more fun than it really is.
“I didn’t do senior assassin because of track and finishing the school year with no distractions,” senior Landon Johnson said.
Students also say that participating in the end of year senior activities can be too stressful as it is a period of preparing for finals, prepping for college, graduation, and more. Others do it for the experience.
“I did senior assassin because it sounded fun and I wanted to win the five-hundred dollars,” senior Madi Harrison said. While the activities that fill senior year and high school may seem overrated while others think they are as fun as you make it. They add some excitement and joy to a typically stressful time.
High school is a period of learning, growing, and changing, and graduating is a huge milestone. If your four years are not the way movies make it out to be, don’t feel pressured to live up to unrealistic expectations.
