As a kid watching television, were you ever jealous of those classic high school parties? Shows like High School Musical, Clueless, Sixteen Candles, and many other cliche movies shaped our idea of the high school experience. Although high school is not really all that it seems in movies and TV shows, it did get one aspect correct: drama. When you rally every teenager in the local area to one place every day, things start to get a little tense. It does not help that raging hormones, stressful schedules, and figuring out your own self-purpose make it much more complicated to function in all of our lives.
Despite this, high school offers great friendships and relationships, as well as situationships. Friendships offer a variety of perks when it comes to being at school. You look forward to seeing your people, talking about interests, showing each other love, playing games, and simply just having fun. Friends always lighten the mood, make classes more fun, and make the days go by faster. Relationships also bring a variety of different experiences to the mix, they give a more loving side of the experience. You have more fun playing around, learning about each other in a more romantic way, and just enjoying each other’s company. But with these dynamics at SHS, comes drama in our school. Breakups, fights, arguments, disagreements and rumors can all make the environment in our school more tense, especially in our classrooms. Students often struggle in this learning environment when they have something on their mind. Pressure, conscious or unconscious, can affect their mood and cloud students’ minds, making it harder for them to motivate themselves to do any of their responsibilities.
Most teachers and students do not notice this stress unless it is directly brought up to them. Very often, students have conflicts between each other that most of the time, are never fully resolved. Since these students have negative perceptions of one another, they spread rumors bringing in more people and hatred into the mix. It ruins a lot of people’s reputations and just makes it harder to make friends and have relationships, because everyone is intertwined.
Around our school, we have many students that also experience this. Olivia Theisen, an IB senior at SHS, shared her personal experience: “ It’s affected how I’ve thought about myself personally, people talking behind your back or being the subject of a drama you knew nothing about is definitely damaging. There’s only so much you can do to avoid it, I personally just keep a smaller circle and don’t mention anything I wouldn’t be comfortable sharing.” She makes a good point of keeping details of your life to yourself. Many of the reasons why people have so many rumors and drama spread is because they talk to people they aren’t sure they can trust. Knowing who you share your information to and understanding who you can’t trust is a big factor in keeping your information safe, as well as your reputation.
Another IB senior, Jeremiah Hidayat, mentions his input on the topic: “High school drama is a nuisance that annoys me sometimes. The combination of hormone-filled teens trying to find who they are in the world leads to conflict reasonably. At most, it’s a slight psychological annoyance but at other times it’s entertaining, the interactions are humorous, when they don’t apply to you. High school drama has affected my daily life through the relationships that I have. Drama comes in and out of my friend group, but they are resilient enough to endure.” He sheds light on the positive, as well as negative effects of drama. Although it annoys him, it can also be entertaining as someone outside of the problem looking in. It can be very humorous to watch, like an episode of a television show; following along with the dramatic storyline. Hidayat also added: “Honestly, I have too much work to get distracted. Drama does not affect my work to any extent.” His input shows how some people get too caught up in the drama, and others like him do not even have time to get mixed in in the first place. It helps to have other things that can actually take your mind off of these kinds of distractions, and puts you more responsible by being able to handle both in a mature manner.
Just because we have these conflicts, doesn’t mean problems don’t come with solutions. Many kids struggle with trying to speak up for themselves, but simple apologies and kindness can always go a long way. It is not always about saying what they want to hear, but more of describing how both sides of the party can do better for each other, whether now or much farther in the future. When it comes to solving these complicated problems in our relationships, it’s about paying attention to what they say and how they feel personally about these problems to see what both they, and you, can do better on. People are complicated, but the only way we can truly express how we feel and how people’s feelings and actions affect us, is through communication. We use it every day, for many things, but not very often do people sit and think on what they have to say. When it comes to these kinds of problems, it is important to, not only be careful with what is said, but to really mean what’s being apologized for, or how it really makes someone feel.
Drama can be a hassle to deal with. When it comes to schoolwork, responsibilities, and taking care of relationships, we have a lot on our plate. It’s important to know how our words, and other’s, affect people, and how we can start doing better to communicate with each other and make it right.