High School Musical, Mean Girls, Glee, and most Disney Channel movies and shows all have one main thing in common: the endless American high school tropes.
From the popular girl and her posse to the jock dating the nerd, movies and tv shows give many of us this false idea of what high school is like.
Many of these tropes are nothing like actual high school. Seniors don’t really pay attention to freshmen, there are never “takedowns” of the popular cliche, and school lessons don’t constantly relate to your life.
Martha Dröge, a junior German exchange student at Leesville, started her first semester at an American school this year. “I expected people to be meaner than they are,” Dröge said.
One of the most famous tropes on tv is the “mean popular girl”, which seems to be untrue in real life. Dröge said, “Everyone was just super nice… maybe sometimes overly nice.”
“Because of the movies, that’s basically why I wanted to come here,” said Dröge, “and when it comes to school spirit [at Leesville], I wasn’t disappointed” something she feels Hollywood got right.
“But [school] is a lot harder than I expected,” Dröge said that German schools have the same classes all year with a different schedule each day, and American school seems to be more strenuous, which has its pros and cons for her.
Dröge explained how having the same classes every day in America is harder for her because you have to do your homework every day and classes can get boring.
Nonetheless, these shows and movies are fun and entertaining to watch. Luckily, last time I checked freshmen weren’t getting stuffed in lockers.
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