Every kid growing up watches something based around the idea of being in high school, whether it be on a TV show or in a movie. Watching things on TV makes kids hope and wish for things to be the same way, but they never are. The ways in which high school is actually portrayed on TV is never honestly what it’s like in real life. Going into high school you expect all these things to happen thanks to these movies and TV shows, but they never really do. Kids expect there to be extravagant school dances, romantic love stories and food fights. Nothing of which really happens. Shows always depict high school to be full of bullies, with fighting in the hallways. In my experience that is not the case. I can’t speak for everyone here and say there are none, but for the most part you don’t see them acting in the same ways as we saw on our televisions as kids. Overall it is not actually a bad thing that some of these things do not happen, but still it’s something kids expected to see or experience when in high school. TV has scripted high school in a completely different way then in which I have actually experienced in real life.

In TV shows they portray high school to be something completely different then what it is actually like. Personally, growing up, I feel that I have been betrayed by the shows that I used to watch. High School is nothing like it is seen to be like on television. Growing up watching shows like Degrassi, Hannah Montana, iCarly, Drake & Josh, Ned’s Declassified, Victorious, Zoey 101, and of course High School Musical, I have come to the realization that I have greatly been deceived. The things I thought I would get to experience, or at least have a similar experience to, gave me false hope. I have not experienced anything that I thought I would while being in high school. Back when I was a little kid, I would watch these shows and wish for high school to be just like I had seen when I grew up. High school always looked like “all that”, getting kids excited for the future to come, but in my case, I have found that high school is not like that at all.

In real life I have experienced high school in a completely different way then what I had seen as a child. In movies and TV shows, high school is always seen as very cliquey, with the constant rivalries between the “popular girls” and everyone else. In the real world, that is not the case. When getting to high school, everyone seems to just blend together as one united group. Although there are still some cliques, it is nothing like you saw on TV, it’s much more relaxed, or at least in my eyes it is. They dramatize everything, making it seem like everyone has enemies and no one gets along with each other (just making for better TV). And although this may be true for some shows, it’s certainly not the case for them all. In real life the unfolding drama is not nearly as extreme as it is in the movies. There are not the same hallway fights and overly dramatic scenes in the middle of a classroom like there were on Degrassi. And there are certainly not a group of kids always discussing and planning out ways in which to survive high school like in Nickelodeon’s Ned’s Declassified.

People certainly do not lead the same lives in real life high school as they do on TV. Knowing that high school is obviously not a Disney Channel musical, it still does not feel in any way like what I saw as a kid. Watching High School Musical, I saw schools coming together in song and dance in the middle of basketball games, I saw exaggerated plans to make kids get the best of both worlds on Hannah Montana. And every kids dream growing up was to attend PCA and to live the lives these characters on our favorite TV shows lived, but we all know that didn’t happen to the majority of us.

I can’t speak for all kids in high school, but I certainly can speak for a lot of them. High school is completely different then what I was expecting. Watching all these movies and shows as a kid made me wonder if that was what high school would actually be like, leading to my eventual disappointment. High school is not like what they all said it would be. It’s different then what I had imagined, not necessarily in a bad way, just in a way that makes me believe everything I saw on TV as kid was all just a fictitious lie. TV shows are only meant to dramatize things; it’s illogical to base your future life off of a scripted TV show or movie. Don’t believe everything you see on TV and most importantly don’t give up on something as big as high school, before you really get to try it and see for yourself. To my utmost dismay, I have come to the realization that the high school I came to know and love on the shows I would watch growing up, are not at all like what it’s like in real life. High school is definitely not at all like being on the Disney Channel.