fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2326 ]

[ SECRET POST #2326 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2326 ⌋

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[Game of Thrones secrets, spoilers, etc below]

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Talking mostly about what we see in American media, but please do mention other countries' medias/schooling cultures.

Nope. Nothing at all like a typical media school. No big cliques, no big sports emphasis, no football at all, no getting lost because the entire High School was only 2 stories tall (with cafeteria and gym on the sort of third/basement level) with not that many rooms. No big emphasis on dances or any kind.

I've always just assumed that big city schools were more like what we see on TV and movies but I don't know.

I was in a different school each year and none of them were anything like the "stereotypical" high schools depicted in media. Sure they had some cliques, but that's about it. There also wasn't nearly the economic disparity between students like some media depicts; most people were from families in the same tax bracket.

Re: Was Your High School Like the Typical Media Experience?

spacebabie - 2013-05-16 23:41 (UTC) - Expand

Not really. There were probably groups but there wasn't some kind of clique hierarchy. And there was no time to hang out by lockers or sit around outside. You had four minutes to get to class and the hallways were packed. Everyone was tired all the time.

Not really. A bit, I guess.

I kind of feel like most high school experiences aren't like the typical media high school experience, just by the very nature of the thing - because people are distinct and media representations are broad and unrealistic and for the purposes of narrative. But then I knew someone in college who went to high school in suburban Chicago, and she said it was very much like the typical media experience. So maybe it's something you find only in suburban Chicago or LA.

Re: Was Your High School Like the Typical Media Experience?

blueonblue - 2013-05-17 02:07 (UTC) - Expand

I went to high school in Malaysia, and I think high school portrayal in media over here isn't too far off the mark. Malaysia's not exactly huge on high-school-centric media except in comedies.

I was lucky to go to a very nice school though, despite it being government (? I don't know the English/American word for 'government school'?). There wasn't a lot of drama or a lot of bullying. I think the fact that we're one of those schools that make covering your aurah compulsory for Muslims might have had something to do with it. There was just so little drama and bad things going on it was almost weird.

Re: Was Your High School Like the Typical Media Experience?

(Anonymous) - 2013-05-16 23:13 (UTC) - Expand

Is anything really like it is in media? Sure, there are elements of truth, but the "American High School Experience (tm)" tends to be more about what some middle aged dude semi-remembers about high school than actual high school.

Not even slightly, but there were about as many kids in my high school as there is in a single grade of most high schools (or less), so...

There were sort of cliques, but no one was awful to anyone in particular, and there wasn't really that much rivalry. The authority figures were pretty reasonable. We didn't even have wacky field trip hijinks. The things I remember most were when one of the 'tough guys' freaked out when a bird got into our French classroom and commiserating with the teacher about how awful the Leo di Caprio Romeo + Juliet movie was when most of the class was bonkers over it. (If you haven't seen it--I will admit it's hilarious. Shakespearean dialogue in what looks like modern L.A., with guys waving guns around and speaking in verse. In any other context than English class, it probably would have had at least some charm.)

We also didn't have much in the way of electives, and to this day I have great envy for people whose schools actually had creative writing courses.

Like what I watched? Anime and Buffy.

The culture of the school? Small town in South Carolina with a fairly small high school I guess.. The population was 50% white and 50% black. I never saw any racism, but there was quite a bit of homophobia.

I hung out with the weird, but not too weird loners. I was the nerd loner (I was in advanced classes but poor as fuck) and my best friend was the artistic loner. We were the type of kids that were unobtrusive but well liked. The lunch yard was fairly separated into groups by preppy, sports, goths, etc. Pretty cliche actually.

Football ruled (like most high schools in the South) and players got away with a ton of shit. Cheer leaders did as well. Fairly religious overtones, which sucks if you are not religious. I got into a lot of debates in school and was labeled the Devil's advocate (a lot of people also thought I was gay because I was for gay rights).

Not really; I was really nerdy (shocking, I know) and I mostly stuck with people like me. But I had a really great group of friends, I liked most of my teachers, and no one really gave a shit about prom (I went with some friends and it was fun). There were some cliques, but it wasn't really like typical media at all.

The closest thing that came to my high school experience was the movie Saved, but even then that's a little bit exaggerated and I didn't know anyone who got pregnant. And I hung out with the non-religious people.

Not at all. There were group of friends, but they were defined by who got along better with each other, not who was 'popular' or not. There's not much media about highschool in my country, so American media is the metric I'm using here. We didn't have a big emphasis on sports, and most schools in my country require an uniform and classes are taken in one homeroom; it is the teachers who rotate. This means that there's a degree of familiarity, though yeah sometimes there were outcasts-- but as I said, it had more to do with their personalities than any other factor.

You know, I've been thinking about this lately, because I've been reading The UnSlut Project, and it threw me off so much that there were in fact children who were concerned about who was popular or not, because a lot of people I've talked to (from other countries that weren't mine) didn't share that experience either.

Not even remotely. The building didn't look as cool, it was not an open campus, no outdoor cafeteria seating because it wasn't in southern California, and nobody ever seemed to have free periods or would hang around after school unless they were going to sports practice or something so as a result there was little opportunity for just wandering around talking to people and hatching crazy schemes. On the plus side, there was no popular kids/mean girls clique that ruled the school.

No, not really. Even the most bully-tastic schools I attended were chill as fuck compared to media.

But that was years ago. I keep hearing on the news that bullying has risen, but I have no idea if that reflects the average experience.

I went to a catholic grammar school in NI and there was pretty much no similarities. For one, it was 7 years all in one school and we all wore uniforms, but there wasn't really any cliques or anything like that, because in my year at least, everyone got on with everybody. Um, we had one big dance at the start of our last year, our formal which is kinda like the proms you see in the films, but all organised by the students in a hotel and with a lot more drinking, and fancy clothes and limos and everything. At the end of the last year we'd all go out to a club together and on our last day everyone went to a park at night and lit a bonfire and sat around having a party before exams. We're also all closer to our teachers, mostly becasue by the end you only do 3/4 subjects, so you know your teacher well by then.
For me the typical American high school you see in the media just tends to have a lot more drama and cliques and stuff than here.

(reply from suspended user)

Re: Was Your High School Like the Typical Media Experience?

childings.livejournal.com - 2013-05-17 00:04 (UTC) - Expand

(reply from suspended user)

Re: Was Your High School Like the Typical Media Experience?

childings.livejournal.com - 2013-05-17 00:48 (UTC) - Expand

Nope. Not at all. We had very little drama and almost no bullying (that I was aware of) during my first three years of high school. Then we got a new principal and everything got kind of stupid. Like, instead of focusing on who was going to class and who was causing trouble, the administration started focusing on the dress code. And there were more fights, and some of the good teachers peaced out, and the bad teachers got worse.

European country.
Not at all. My high school was in a small town, with rickety tables, unisex bathrooms and orange curtains. The teachers were adorable and competent, however. I loved the second and third year the most.

There was no clique, no hallways with lockers, no club activity. I liked the food, and you either ate high school food or left the school grounds to eat at home/elsewhere. No graduation ceremony either, because it's not done in my country. Usually, high school lasts for three years. At the end of the third year, every student takes an exam (the same for every student in the whole country) and if they pass, they can go to university or elsewhere. It validates their high school experience and gives them credentials to look for a job or for high levels of education. Class was usually from 8 am to 5pm, with a 1 to 2-hour-break for lunch. That exam looms over the second and third years.

Usually students would smoke on the playground, then moved just outside the school grounds when smoking in public buildings was banned. And we had lots of students strikes as well, with several days spent blocking the high school's entrances (they were over national politics, not internal issues).

So: all in all, loved the teachers and the environment, even if it deserves to be renovated very soon, wouldn't change it.

High schools in tv shows and movies just made me realize how incredibly shitty and impoverished my own school district was.

Re: Was Your High School Like the Typical Media Experience?

(Anonymous) - 2013-05-17 00:15 (UTC) - Expand

(reply from suspended user)

I live in Latin America, went to Catholic school that had the American system (so that means tons and tons of US history involved). But it wasn't as anything I've seen on TV. There were your usual cliques, but people would talk normally with each other. The "nerds" were also the popular bunch. My bro and I belonged to the same class and we would sit right beside each other. He would talk to my friends I would talk to his'. We had Catholic festivities (like having mass during Ash Wednesday) and so on.

tl;dr I think my school was more like Emperor's New School rather than say, Glee or other American shows.

Somewhat, I guess, but my friend group was weird and not like anything I've seen in media. So I didn't interact much with the rest of the school's general population. I was probably viewing it through a media-influenced lens too.

Yes and no.

The building was weird -- it was layed out in circles, with the library in the central hub surrounded by the main hallway, and pod/wings branching off it. Most of the classrooms were only separated from each other by partitions. Except for the main entrance and the cafeteria, there were no windows. I'm guessing that was partly due to the overall weird architecture, and partly because it was Florida and the AC was running most of the time anyway.

Football and the cheerleaders were both big deals. But the star QB was a member of the science club, and the group I hung out with included the smart kids, the weird kids, and a few of the popular kids. (Class president, homecoming queen and yearbook editor for one.)

There was some awful bullying -- but as far as I ever saw or heard of, only on the busses as they were loading up after school.

Only seniors could park on campus, and since the nearest neighborhood was nearly a mile away that meant the seniors all drove and everyone else took the bus.

It was too far for anyone to go out or home for lunch, so it wasn't allowed. Seniors could eat outside, and they were allowed to invite anyone else to eat with them.

We did have lockers, and hanging out by them was a thing during lunch. I guess we were a little "Hollywood", because various school clubs frequently had weekend outings to the beach. Except for the football/cheerleader popularity, I think that's the closest we got to looking like a school on TV.

Meh, Freshman year was very Chocolate War. By senior year, it was very much like a 80s escape-from-suburbia movie, only with more homosexual subtext. Day after day of dumb boring shit punctuated by occasional comic stupidity or half-hearted suicide attempts, using hobbies as an escape valve, failing to establish any kind of a romantic relationship, and field trips to a larger city to make it more tolerable.

Only not as cool as meeting Albert Collins, or Octoberfest.

The public high school I went to for fresh-soph years definitely wasn't. There were a lot of potheads, but no cliques, no "popular" kids, and no bullying of gay kids, nerds, disabled kids, or freshmen.

The Catholic school I'm about to graduate from...? Kind of. There's a huge rich vs. poor angst war, lots of racism, tons of Mean Girls-esque backstabbing, and even more fun. I can't wait to get out.

While I'm still in high school, I can say my experience differs greatly from most media that shows high schools. My school is small, and doesn't have any sports teams or much clubs except the robotics team.
I have accelerated classes where they're in semesters to coincide with the college the school is located on.
There's some groups that stick together, but it's not something I really see since I'm out of the building a majority of the time now. I'm either indifferent or dislike most of the people there, though.
We also don't have lockers and have a business casual dress code.