Prom, is it actually like in movies?

Opinion Story & Photo by Giorgia Risoldi – Staff Reporter

 

 As a foreigner, I’ve always seen prom as a romantic big deal, something that existed in teenage movies, something that I wanted to live at every cost. Now that I am living the reality, it is not how I expected it to be. 

   Prom is an American high school traditional dance for those who are juniors and seniors. It is a ‘party’ to celebrate the almost end of the school year, and I have always imagined it to be the dream of every girl, the only thing that was actually interesting about high school.

   “I think it’s fun to see the royalty and everything but I’m not really into it as an outsider,” Nina Richter, senior exchange student from Germany, said. 

   Being here I realized that high schoolers have other priorities, and this famous dance is not one of them. 

   “I think prom dresses are overrated, because why spend all that money on a dress that will be used once?” Richter asks.  

   Talking about prom dresses, I noticed that not everybody spends from two to three or four-hundred dollars to buy their dream dress. On the contrary, some girls didn’t even buy it, they took it from a donation at a church, me included. 

   I believe that exchange students are the perfect outsiders to judge this tradition, especially because it is a new experience for me, since high schools around the world don’t have dances and celebrations like prom. 

   “In Germany we don’t have things like that. Maybe we have a little dance at the end of the year but nothing special or too formal,” Richter said. 

   I guess the biggest difference would be the royalty. I, in my opinion, think that there are girls that have always wanted to be prom queens, so, this might be a bigger deal. 

   Prom is around the corner, so exchange students or not, have fun and take home a good memory of it.