The exchange students romanticizing American high school
But the reality doesn’t always match the TikToks.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
A trend with all the nostalgia of visiting your old high school, without the instant “Wait, why did I do this?” regret. —Kate
As a child raised on sitcoms and young adult novels, I was led to believe high school was a place of primary colors and weekly pep rallies (and 30-year-olds playing teens). Instead, my high school was a series of gray hallways and satellite classrooms in parking lots, with its one claim to fame being the students who watched The Help and gave a classmate poop cake. C’est la vie.
Even more powerful than the high school imagery I was served as an American kid? What’s currently being exported abroad on TikTok. For the exchange students documenting their experience on the app, American high school apparently lives up to the hype.
“I always felt like American high schools were prioritizing a fun and chill environment, with approachable teachers, and a lighter amount of homework,” Ossean, a 17-year-old exchange student from France who is studying in Michigan, tells me over email. “I saw so many videos about football games, spirit weeks, and homecoming that it fueled my enthusiasm even before I experienced anything!”
It was social media where Ossean learned about exchange programs. I had started seeing these videos on my For You Page, too: montages of morning bus rides and school assemblies in the gym, all set to soundtracks like the Boy Meets World theme music. Even I, a 31-year-old woman whose memories of high school are tainted by the smell of spoiled cafeteria milk, was nostalgic. It was also fascinating to see the things that, through exchange students’ eyes, I had taken for granted.
In Ossean’s first vlog, which has received over 8 million views, she captures pep rallies and McDonalds lunch breaks and morning bus rides through the snow. “I feel like I live in a movie every day,” she captioned a later slideshow, which featured a sunset over a basketball hoop, a row of snacks at a gas station, a pumpkin patch, and a pair of cowboy boots. I asked Ossean what she had been looking forward to most about going to school in America: “To open my locker and have my first ride in the well-known yellow bus,” she said. “Also my first football game and the homecoming of course!”
It’s equal parts sweet and heartbreaking to see these familiar moments treated with such excitement. I was there too! I lived it! And had no idea so many people abroad were wishing they could, too. The comment section is filled with people from countries like Poland, England, and Australia who want nothing more than their own American high school experience—as well as baffled Americans who are realizing their everyday existence is someone else’s dream.
Perhaps it’s this uncanny valley feeling of seeing your reality translated back to you through fresh eyes that has made American exchange student videos so popular. Another creator named Ema went viral for her own “American high school vibes” video, which captured track meets, school dances, pep rallies, and classwork.
“I’m sitting here, crying in the Netherlands,” one comment reads.
But Ossean has faced a few reality checks.
“I have more homework than I thought I would have, and school remains school,” she says. “Sometimes you get bored, you have a strict teacher or you have a bad grade. The idea that foreign students were making friends easily was spread everywhere online, so I was pretty confident before coming. But in reality, it's really hard to be friends with Americans and build strong relationships!”
In the end, she says her expectation of the “perfect dream live” was “impossible and delusional.”
“But overall, I'm not disappointed because some of my expectations were still met,” she continues. “My school is giant; we have a big gym, nice teachers, fun elective classes, football games, etc. All of these things have provided the feeling of enjoyment and freedom I was seeking in an American school.”
Ossean’s exchange program comes to an end this spring, and she has a bucket list for her remaining months as an American high school student, including joining the soccer team, visiting other states, and going shopping for prom dresses with her friends.
“We don't have all these fun things American students have, like homecoming, prom, school games, or even graduation,” she says. “I'm not denigrating the French school system, but it's a fact that the educational environment is very stressful and intense. School is a big pressure, and everything is taken seriously there. I think that people are genuinely amazed by the fact that the American school system offers less pressure and mixes it with a feeling of fun and enjoyment.”
It’s trends like this that make me realize my nostalgia hits harder these days. There’s so much I don’t remember anymore that, at the time, felt like the most significant and important thing in the world. Looking back on old pictures and videos of myself in high school doesn’t feel like revisiting memories, but watching a movie made by someone else, starring a person who couldn’t possibly be me. It just feels too far away—but on TikTok it’s still happening, over and over again.
You just took me back to when LAL and I had a Finnish exchange brother - well more me than her, cuz she was away at school. The information pipeline to Helsinki and beyond back then was constrained to Hollywood dubs. Nevertheless, one of the first questions asked of me en route from CVG to our house was “Do you have your own car? A Firebird?” Sure, Petri’s take on America was skewed; no worse then than now, really. Still, I shudder to think of what would’ve, could’ve been posted online back then, and hairstyles and fashion may be the least of my worries 😂