High school: some will say it’s the best time of your life, others will argue that it’s stressful and uneventful. Four years of finals, forgetting your locker combination, procrastination and pulling all nighters. There have been hundreds of movies and TV shows about high school, and, ironically, most of them have gotten almost everything about it wrong.

To start off, many Disney movies such as High School Musical are completely exaggerated from the reality of high school. It shows students performing musical numbers in the middle of basketball games and having no homework. In real life people aren’t going to burst into song in the middle of your advanced chemistry final, and most days you will be buried in homework.

The media portrays many unrealistic clichés such as:

• You’re going to meet your soulmate in high school 
• The friends you make then are the friends you will have for the rest of your life
• There will be parties every week
• Even if you have never done any homework, you will get accepted into an ivy league school – no questions asked
• You and your significant other will always win Prom king and queen
• The boy you like is secretly a vampire
• Detention will be a fun place where you hang out with new, edgy friends

Contrary to popular belief, everyone’s high school experience is different and often 

doesn’t include epic partying and high school sweethearts. The chances of you staying in touch with people you met as a teenager are very small. 

Another incorrect example of the high school experience is Riverdale, a TV show based on the Archie comics. Alien invasions, gargoyle kings, having a baby with your cousin, performing a dance number for your boyfriend in jail and solving a murder are just a few events that occur in this show. It continues to represent high school in all the wrong ways.

Next, Grease, the iconic 1970s musical, is another movie that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. It might be every kid’s future dream, but you’re not going to reunite with your mysterious lover you met over the summer on your first day at a new school. The cast of Grease has many actors playing high-schoolers when they’re actually much older. For example, the actress who portrayed the character Betty Rizzo, Stockard Channing, was 33 years old when the film was made.

In the end, high school is almost always glamorized, but there are still some ways to have a decent time. These include making friends with the right crowd, putting effort into school work and getting involved in clubs and sports that interest you. The most important thing is to make the most of your high school years because, before you know it, suddenly you’ll be an adult wishing you could be a kid again.