10 things I learnt about high school from 90s teen movies.

I don't know about you, but when I was younger I would watch tv shows or movies and believe that what happened on screen was pretty much exactly how things really were in the real world. This was clearly either wishful thinking or just plain stupidity (place your bets now). So when the late 90s rolled around with all those American teen comedies (She's All That, Never Been Kissed, 10 Things I Hate About You to name just a few...) and I was almost about to go to high school and was wondering what it would be like, I looked to them to show me the way...

10 things I learnt about high school from 90s teen movies

1) Despite being between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, everyone will look twenty five.

This lot were 17, believe it or not!

2) There will be a group of cool kids. These will include a 'popular jock', a 'nasty cheerleader', a 'cocky blonde guy', 'the cruelest girl in school' and a 'token black guy'.

3) Your high school will look AMAZING. It will be huge and sunlit, even in winter. It will have massive hallways that you can't possibly get squashed in and lockers will adorn the sides. There will be a large green football field and track course outside with bleachers you can sit on and it might even have some of those big artificial light things.

4) There will be cliques of kids who will all look and act exactly the same. You must join a clique. Then you must adopt their ways. You must except that these will be your only friends for the duration of high school. According to that guy in 10 Things I Hate About You these are: the beautiful people, the coffee kids, the white rastas, the cowboys and the future MBAs (smart kids).

That guy knows his stuff.

5) If you aren't a football player, cheerleader or if your parents don't own half of Manhattan, you'll be a loser.

The beautiful people.

6) The school faculty might all be aliens!

If they are, Josh Hartnett will be the only one recruited to save you. Good luck with that.

7) There will be an extremely cool party that you somehow manage to get into. Someone unexpected will dance on a table, people will have enlightened revelations about their lives, someone's parents house will get wrecked and the police will end up breaking the whole thing up.

Even Heath's confused.

8) It will be REALLY easy for anyone at all to impersonate a high school kid, so watch out for that.

           Guess which one's not supposed to be in high school? That's right,

           it's our favourite 25 year old reporter, the fabulous Drew Barrymore.

9) A lot goes on at high school. Everything that is, but school work. You can get away with going only to the odd class, never seeming to do any homework and still get into an ivy league college.

Like this guy apparently.

10) If you wear glasses and have a ponytail, one day someone will give you a makeover that consists of removing your glasses and taking your ponytail out. This will make you instantly prettier and your wildest dreams will come true as Mr-generic-bland-jock-guy aka Freddie Prinze Jr (see above) will now take you to the prom.

Before

After

The main lesson I should have learnt is that this is not what high school is like. But it is what high school would have been like if I had been in a 90s teen movie.