Hollywood has portrayed high school with its most extreme and stereotyped characteristics. Since Hollywood never shows us the true nature of high school, we go into these four years with unrealistic expectations, both good and bad.

Some movies, like High School Musical, only show high school in a positive sense. The only negativity in this movie, and most other tween high school movies, is some high school drama, which is always resolved by the end of the episode or movie.

High school will not be all singing and happy resolutions. There will be stress, and you will have to face numerous challenges.

On the other end of the spectrum, showing all the negativity of high school, are TV shows like 13 Reasons Why, where even the fun events like school dances are shadowed with negativity. These shows combine all the possible ways high school could go wrong. Tragedies don’t happen all the time, or in every school. Hollywood’s version, where a new tragedy occurs every week, just isn’t real.

The most frequent “real” complaint about high school is the increased expectations. Classes can become overwhelming, especially if you don’t stay on top of your work.

Hollywood seems to forget about the most important part of high school, the education. For the average student most of school will revolve around learning. Any drama faced at school will seem like background noise once you get into your work.

The drama-filled sitcoms like Gossip Girl, The Secret Life of The American Teenager, and Glee falsify the high school experience just as much as every other show.

Of course you will face some drama at school, but Hollywood has taken these dramas, that only affects a small portion of the school population, and exaggerates them to create an entertaining show.

In shows like Gossip Girl, friends that are on the outs go to war with each other with blackmail and admission into mental hospitals. In reality, you may not keep friends all the way through high school, especially if you and your friends have busy schedules or different interests, but it will never escalate to a nuclear war.

“Going into high school, I was nervous because I thought it would be hard to make friends. It was definitely a lot better than I thought it would be, and I ended up meeting a lot of people. Hollywood’s portrayal of high school made me think that there would be a lot of cliques and mean people so it made me nervous, but it wasn’t that bad,” said Class of 2018 student, Sofia Schuller.

The truth is, high school is a combination of all three scenarios, and something different altogether. You will get the good, the bad, and the drama but not nearly as much as Hollywood shows.

You will have plenty of opportunities to have fun and make new friends. You will make a new home in the Lancer Nation.

Morgan Mathews, Class of 2019, said, “I thought we’d have more free time between classes. Unfortunately, we only have four minutes. I think Hollywood’s portrayal of high school exaggerates the amount of free time students have.”

And, by the way, as far as we know there aren’t any supernatural forces lurking in our high school, like in Teen Wolf, The Vampire Diaries, or Wizards of Waverly Place. The magic of high school come from what you put into it.