How High School Differs in Movies, YA Books and Real Life

great post.

For me, it was Saved by the Bell that formed my amusingly off-kilter expectations of Junior High/High School as a kid

As for details not always ringing true, one thing to take into consideration is there's rarely time or space to write about every aspect of high school in a contemporary. At one point during my LIKE MANDARIN revisions, I was like, P.E.! I didn't mention P.E.! (Grace is definitely not an athlete.) But I just couldn't talk about every class, or every aspect of every day -- as writers, part of our job's culling details that detract from the real story. (though I did give P.E. a shout-out.)

That's really terrific!

But I do wonder how much of this is dependent on the school--for example, I know that at my former high school, the kids still do eat required lunch in the cafeteria up through senior year, and they still have lockers.

I can understand this, but anything depicted in movies or books are a distorted reflection of reality. For example, in real life, people stutter, say "like" and "um" quite frequently, and sometimes have trouble forming their ideas into words. Or even talk about random crap that has no importance whatsoever. If we made our characters talk like this in real life, readers would get bored of them. So we give the illusion of realistic talking, without putting in all the boring parts of speech.

This is the same in almost every aspect. Same with school. If your book is about screeching werepigs attacking some girl's friend, the girl is not going to worry about doing homework for 3+ hours a night. Nor, would the reader subject themselves to listening about said girl do homework when there's real action to be had!

I agree that some writers should incorperate this more, but it can't be done for all books.

That's really cool.

My high school was completely different from what you see on T.V. and in the movies. Jocks were in choir, drama geeks were cool, and nerds were voted prom king and queen. Sometimes I feel that if I actually wrote a novel based on how high school was for me, people would wonder if I was actually from this planet.

I'm always interested in hearing what others have to say about this topic. Thank you!

Great topic!

I went to an all girls high school, so my high school was totally different than most people's. I loved it. However, it was an academically rigorous school, so emphasis was placed a lot more on academics than cattiness. It definitely was a pressure-cooker, but in a different way.

(What is with the whole I-meet-my-soulmate-in-biology thing in books nowadays? We do things like take notes on cell respiration in biology for two hours, in dead silence. NOTHING, I mean NOTHING could be less romantic.)

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Thanks for posting this link, Angela! It was great read. I do find some things unusual about the blogger's school (not eating in the cafeteria, no lockers (where the heck do they keep their stuff?), lack of a 'popular' group), but she makes some very valid points.

Smish

5) Random people coming up to me and offering me drugs on a daily basis.

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This one's my favourite. I was so sure I'd have to "just say no" to so many people, but it was never necessary

My high school didn't really have bullies or anything of the like, but there were definitely popular kids. The unpopular kids weren't really mocked, though, just kind of ignored. They were, however, teased like nothing else in junior high. I speak from experience Most people grew up by high school, though.

If I wrote half the stuff that went on in my high school, no one would believe me. But then, I spent most of my time running interference between the drama dept and the rest of the teachers and trying very hard to keep the third drama teacher in three years from getting himself fired. We knew where on campus we were allowed to eat- and rarely ate there-, had lockers- and never had time to use them-, and knew all the corners to stay away from if you weren't interested in buying quarter or dime bags.

We considered ourselves a pretty normal school.

Hehe, that blogger is a much adored twiftie (chocowrites on AW) And that WAS a pretty awesome post.

As someone also in high school? I can't really see a popular group either (there was one in our earlier years, though. Senior now). Don't understand meeting soul mates in Bio (really? Science class? I mean, come on, English Lit studying romantic poetry or something AT LEAST).

I pretty much agree with choco's post, tbh

Very interesting.

One of my MCs is trying to get into Spelman college and her school work reflects that. She's half-crazed! My other MC wants to go to Cooper Union and she's seriously stressing over the admission requirements.

I'm ancient,but back in the day,we did have cliques. Weird kids like myself caught hell coming and going. Then there was drama inside the weird clique,lol!

Jocks did rule the school and let everybody know it. Bullying was resolved by a fight at 3pm and you were friends two weeks later.

It's interesting to see that today's teens are more tolerant. Being older,I think we tend to write what we remember from high school. I also don't get true love begins in Biology class stuff that is in YA these days. All I remember from that boring as all hell hour was my teacher's droning,kids trying to fling animal parts at one another,and watching the clock as it moved SLOOOOOOOOWLY.

My school was very sterotypical, so I actually experienced a lot of what I read in books, see on TV, etc., but I know that's not always the case.

inkspatters said:

Hehe, that blogger is a much adored twiftie (chocowrites on AW) And that WAS a pretty awesome post.

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Oh! Thanks for telling us who the blogger is. I had added it to my favorites and planned to check back often, because the blog was so awesome. Now that I know it's AW's chocowrites, I'm even more excited to pop in and see what's on her mind.

Angela_785 said:

I agree, that everyone's experience is going to be a bit different depending on where they live, economics, school focus, etc.

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It really does seem that it isn’t just when you went to high school that influences your experience, but where. I read YA and wonder where are the metal detectors? The security guards? My high school, urban, huge, very multicultural, just didn’t stress academics or preparing for college at all. Graduating from high school itself was considered an achievement. AP classes? No. Helicopter parents? Just the opposite, parents involved at all with their kid’s lives were a rarity. It did have groups of friends with similar interests, though they weren’t really cliques, and movement between them was much more fluid than books and movies portray.

Great discussion!

Kitty27 said:

One of my MCs is trying to get into Spelman college and her school work reflects that. She's half-crazed! My other MC wants to go to Cooper Union and she's seriously stressing over the admission requirements.

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Heh, I was rejected by Cooper Union years ago. Their application process put a major black cloud over much of the winter of my senior year. Nice detail!

Hehe. I guess since ink blew my cover I should join in

In retrospect, it would have probably have been better for me to ask people to compare their own high school experience to YA high school.

It really is so variable. But I was pretty shocked to learn that there are high schools that are really similar to the ones in movies. o.0 Some of the things that I thought were so cliche--it turns out--really do exist.

And Smish, to answer you questions:

1) We eat outside
2) We don't put our stuff anywhere. We lug it around. Everyday. We always say we're going to sue the school for back damages.

I think this might bring light to some of my experiences:

My school probably is strange compared to many other schools in different areas in some respects--we have different scheduling and everything . It's public, ~2,500 students, and despite my talk of lots of studying & AP classes everyone (including AP students) pretty much go to junior college/ state unis. The non-honors students I know groan about SATs/ homework as much as I do though. We're pretty much a sports school, pretty weak academics-wise. And the demographics are a little different too--we're extremely diverse, mostly minorities. I guess we're middle class but people living in other areas of the county think they'll get shot if they drive here for some reason. o.0

So. Hope that explains a little

chocowrites said:

2) We don't put our stuff anywhere. We lug it around. Everyday. We always say we're going to sue the school for back damages.

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Ditto. No lockers for us either!

I went to high school from 1992-1995. I had a locker and I ate in the cafeteria sometimes. You can't eat outside in Canada anytime past October unless you want frostbite.

We didn't have cheerleaders, security guards, metal detectors, or SATs (not done in Canada), but we had cliques. Popular, brains, freaks, jocks, weirdos, etc. Sometimes one group mingled with another. Bullying happened. Drugs happened (though no one ever offered me any during school hours).

I try to write my MC's high school experiences realistically and not resort to stereotypes, but it's hard. It's been 15 years since I've been there and I have no idea how things have changed, or how other high school experiences differ from mine.




Another thing I struggle with in my books are how things work in high school, things I have no idea about, like sports (something I never did during my own high school career). If one of my characters play, let's say, soccer in school, during which months does he/she play? How often? When and where are the games? If a student plays one sport in school, do they usually play another sport when the season's over? I try to research these things but it's not easy sometimes.

Epiphany said:

Ditto. No lockers for us either!

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I don't understand! What did you do with your books all day? I broke my spine carrying just half of mine around, cause we could at least keep the afternoon classes in the locker until lunch x.x

SillyMom25 said:

I went to high school from 1992-1995. I had a locker and I ate in the cafeteria sometimes. You can't eat outside in Canada anytime past October unless you want frostbite.

We didn't have cheerleaders, security guards, metal detectors, or SATs (not done in Canada), but we had cliques. Popular, brains, freaks, jocks, weirdos, etc. Sometimes one group mingled with another. Bullying happened. Drugs happened (though no one ever offered me any during school hours).

I try to write my MC's high school experiences realistically and not resort to stereotypes, but it's hard. It's been 15 years since I've been there and I have no idea how things have changed, or how other high school experiences differ from mine.




Another thing I struggle with in my books are how things work in high school, things I have no idea about, like sports (something I never did during my own high school career). If one of my characters play, let's say, soccer in school, during which months does he/she play? How often? When and where are the games? If a student plays one sport in school, do they usually play another sport when the season's over? I try to research these things but it's not easy sometimes.

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I'm preeettty sure that soccer's a winter sport. So during the winter of whatever country you've set it in.

I used to play netball, which is also a winter sport, but I didn't take up a summer sport. I always wanted to, just never got round to it (well, there was this one year that I was going to sign up for rugby, but my mother kind of went bonkers over the idea of her little girl getting tackled and breaking teeth and what not). A lot of my friends play sport year round, though. It just depends on the student and how much sport they want to do etc.

Also, I just want to mention that the idea of a cafeteria is totally foreign to me. We Aussies don't HAVE cafeterias. Everyone eats outside (this used to get problematic because our school grounds used to turn into a massive pond with ducks swimming around and everything. But they got a drainage system to fix that, recently).

Annnd everyone obsesses over academics at my high school. We're an academic school...Average graduating mark is 96. Yeah, we're nerdy

Haha egood, I literally sometimes have 3 textbooks in my arms, plus binders and notebooks in my backpack. Painful.

SillyMom25 said:

Another thing I struggle with in my books are how things work in high school, things I have no idea about, like sports (something I never did during my own high school career). If one of my characters play, let's say, soccer in school, during which months does he/she play? How often? When and where are the games? If a student plays one sport in school, do they usually play another sport when the season's over? I try to research these things but it's not easy sometimes.

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What ink said is true. (netball? what's that? haha)

But I'll give you a detailed breakdown

The seasons of the sport vary in different places--I know high school soccer where I live is in the winter season (since we don't have...winter. Ha), but high school soccer in places like New Jersey is in the fall, probably it'd be too cold otherwise.

But from my own experience:

Since soccer over here is a winter sport, we had tryouts in November. In the beginning of the season, before the actual games start we would practice five days a week, for two and a half hours after school (usually from 3-5:30ish). When games did start, it went something like this:

Monday-- Away game. So we'd leave around 12 A.M. on the bus if the school was more than half an hour away. We'd get to the other school's soccer field (sometimes we used the football field with soccer lines redone) around 1 A.M. And just sit around for a few hours. If our game was at 3:30, we'd start warming up/putting our gear on at 2:30ish. JV would play first from 3:30-5:00ish. Varsity from 5:30-7:00ish. Parents can come and pick you up so you don't have to wait, but sometimes I'd get home around 8 P.M.

And then start my homework.

Tuesday--regular practice

Wednesday--home game. We'd leave our last period early or not go at all. We'd go down to the soccer field after changing and start warming up and setting up goals and everything.

Thursday--regular practice

Friday- regular practice.

Sometimes we'd have tournaments on Saturdays as well.

And about the other sports:

It really just depends if you want to or not. For example, I played volleyball in the fall (similar practice/games schedule for all sports) and then went to my club soccer practice straight afterward twice a week. So some days I'd have about 5 hours of sports practice, combined. The club soccer games would be on Saturday mornings.
Then in winter, you're not allowed to play on club soccer if you play high school, so the clubs disband and we'd join the high school soccer team. In spring, I'd have club volleyball and club soccer simultaneously (we'd start around March--high school soccer ends around February). Summer I'd have club soccer again, mostly tournaments.

Rinse and repeat.

ETA: Cafeteria = foreign land for me too. I've been in there, like twice in three years.

Soccer as a winter sport??
Ours was in the fall, in New England.

My advice: the best way to research is to look up a high school (or few) in the area where your story is set. Many high schools have websites, and they'll have things like season schedules posted. That helps majorly

re: lockers--we had them, but I didn't even bother to remember where mine was after freshman year. My high school was set up like a college campus, and there just wasn't time between classes to get to a locker. I don't know anyone who actually used theirs. Ever.

charlotte49ers said:

My school was very sterotypical, so I actually experienced a lot of what I read in books, see on TV, etc., but I know that's not always the case.

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I'm telling you.. there is a crazy hs book forming between our own hs experiences. Big seller. Big.

egoodlett said:

I don't understand! What did you do with your books all day? I broke my spine carrying just half of mine around, cause we could at least keep the afternoon classes in the locker until lunch x.x

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This doesn't make sense.

Why would your bag be heavier because of books? It's just data on your Reader - it doesn't weigh any more because you've licensed a few more books !!!

Or did you print out your books and lug the printouts around ?

Why would anyone do that? And isn't that a copyright violation ?

Mac
(Channeling questions on behalf of my grandkids)