Dead Poets Society 35 years later

I watched Dead Poets Society for the first time in my high school English class. I watched it again about 5 years post high school. In high school, I identified with a lot of the characters in the movie. I grew up a huge perfectionist and I felt a lot of pressure on myself to be the best at everything. I felt like I had to get all A's, and that anything less (yes, even an A-) meant I was a failure.

The movie hit hard for me. A lot of my friends and I spent our high school years worried more about our grades than we did anything else. It consumed our lives. We were constantly comparing our grades with each other and it pinned us against each other. We stopped seeing each other as friends and people and we started seeing each other as competition. In high school, I was definitely in the "smart kids" clique. School was the forefront of our discussions. Many of the people I knew weren't thinking about rest or making memories. They weren't thinking about prom or parties or going to football games. They were thinking about who was going to be validictorian.

Watching the film again helped me analyze more clearly what my high school experience was like. I did put a lot of pressure on myself, but it also led me to seeing the bigger forces that had socialized me and my friends to be that way. Individualism was a big part of it. Along with that, capitalism and white supremacy which have made me feel like I have to constantly be working to be successful and a meaningful person to society.

My college years were a lot different than my high school ones in that I feel I broke away from these things, as I became educated about them. I started learning about the beauty of group work and collaboration. In the writing world, instead of feeling like all writers were my competition, I started to see all of us as being a part of the same team. We were all telling our own stories and trying to make the world a better place with our words. I started to see that my story alone would never be enough, that the world needed more stories and more experiences than just mine.

Many of my social work classes were completion based and they allowed me more space to learn. I wasn't worried about turning in the work for a certain grade. I was just doing the best I could and I wasn't afraid of failing. I was willing to experiment and try out new things, and then get feedback. I learned way more in those kinds of learning environments.

I would love to see more of this. I can confidently say that most of what I learned in high school is completely gone. I memorized it all just to get through the exams. I find I only remember things when I apply the knowledge. There's a lot less stress when you're just enjoying the learning.

Another thing I noticed about Dead Poets Society is that a lot of the parents in Dead Poets Society put a lot of pressure on their sons to do well. Something I've been able to reflect on about my own parents is that they were never really strict. I placed a lot of the pressure on myself. I feel like it was in my head that I had to get a good grade for them. My parents were really proud of me when I did well, but they would've still loved me even if I didn't get perfect marks. They also always believed in my dreams. Like Neil, I also had a passion for the arts. I've always wanted to be a writer. They didn't tell me no or tell me I couldn't major in English like I ended up doing. They were rooting for me the whole way. They attended both my English and psychology graduation. Watching the film again made me feel very grateful for my parents because they've always been supportive no matter what, even when I've messed up. I'm privileged to have such a good support system.

We've gotten even closer in my college years since I've done work on myself to truly be able to let go of all the weight.

Me feeling like I have to constantly be working and be constantly perfect is something I'll always have to work on. I've read Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey, and for me, it's healing my inner child to be able to fight back against the systems that once held me captive. It feels so good to be able to slow down and take my time and just enjoy learning and growing at my own pace and in my own way.