Growing up we watched the High School Musical movies, did we not? We always wondered if it was realistic or if it was what we actually do in reality. The answer is yes and no. We don’t randomly break out into song, we don’t randomly start dancing. I mean yes we do have some struggles that they had in the movie such as trying to graduate, trying to pass our classes, getting detention, trying to figure out what college we want to go to and belong at, and the basics of high school that we all stress and worry about: that if we skip a class or two or even miss a day or two of school your whole education is ruined. It’s okay to let go sometimes because that’s what we need most of the time since we have all this stress on us. We have higher expectations since we have more technology these days than there was 16 years ago when the first HSM movie aired. 

Through the years when people started going into high school they thought their experience was going to be like a HSM life, nothing like it.  Obviously we and they knew that we weren’t going to break out into song and randomly start dancing. All your high school friends working at a country club over the summer and just randomly bursting into song in the kitchen while cooking, in the pool, in the hallway, in the school gym? When do you see people in your high school randomly singing and dancing? Never right? Watching these movies as we were growing up we thought that high school was probably going to be something like that but when you really get to high school or ask around if that ever happened to them, nothing had ever happened. 

So were the expectations of High School Musical really what we thought they were going to be? Not at all. In the movies it looks like an amazing life experience, just singing and dancing out of nowhere not caring what others think of the way you dance, sing, or do things in particular. They were just doing them. In reality you don’t really have to care what others think but a lot of people do. That’s why they get afraid of doing the littlest things like presenting in front of a classroom or trying to talk to a teacher about something they need help with or even talking to someone next to you about an assignment or just a regular conversation. A lot of people can’t just be themselves like they do in the High School Musical movies because they’re afraid of being judged. But also in the movies it doesn’t really talk about a lot of mental problems that many in this generation or even decade have like anxiety, depression, etc. They had it easier before than we do right now. Most of us don’t even want to get out of bed to get up and go to school. So overall expectations? Definitely not what we expected. We thought or at least I thought there was going to be more to high school, but it’s honestly nothing like the High School Musical movies whatsoever.