Movies That Lied To Us About College

Leaving high school behind was probably a frightening but exciting experience. We knew college was going to be a different world than our small town high schools but how exactly? You’ve probably watched tons of movies and TV shows that depicted kids going off to colleges and living the life. Did it turn out for you the way it looked on TV? Probably not. A lot of shows and movies portray college differently than we actually experience it. But what exactly have they lied about? Accepted (2009) Accepted is a prime example of “Do Not Try This At Home.” The movie is about a group of kids who don’t get into the colleges they applied to so instead, they create their own college. While their fake college certainly seems like fun with classes like “The Rise and Fall of Chevy Chase” and “Walking Around Thinking About Stuff”, the point of college is to learn valuable skills and knowledge. Just because you didn’t get accepted to college doesn’t mean you can just create your own. Sorry, folks. Pitch Perfect (2012) While we’ve all dreamed of joining a cool a capella group in college (No? Just us?), people don’t really just break out into song that often. (We’re looking at you too, High School Musical) As much as we’d love to have groups of people harmonizing in the hallways and rap-battling in the bathrooms, it just doesn’t happen. Instead, join one of WVU’s on-campus groups (or start one!) that center around singing. They’re much more laidback than the Bellas but you’ll have just as much fun. The Social Network (2010) Sure, it would be absolutely amazing to be in Mark Zuckerberg’s shoes right now. The man is loaded! However, in the movie, before he creates “The Facebook”, he creates a website called Face Smash that has users comparing their classmates based on their attractiveness. Not very cool, Mark. We also don’t recommend alienating your friends and peers or stealing intellectual property. It’s not a great way to create lasting friendships. It might have worked for Zuckerberg (How many Facebook friends do you think he has?), but it probably won’t work for us. If you need a location to craft the next Facebook, Pierpont’s cyber lounge is open 24 hours a day! No matter how much we love all of these movies and the countless others just like them, they don’t paint the most realistic picture of what the college experience is like. What expectations of college did you have that you learned from movies or TV?