Which reminds us of the other most important thing in nineties teen movies. Namely, the perpetual and overwhelming anxiety of applying to colleges, keeping up your grade point average, and the hopefully getting into the school of your choice. High school is all fun and games, the "liminal state of development", and the arrival of college is the onslaught of responsibility and exhilaration of adulthood". The college application process is the dread spectre which haunts each and every teen movie produced in the nineties, from Clueless all the way up until 10 Things I Hate About You. It's always there in the background, the ultimate end point for all characters involved, even if their education is rarely anything more than a sub-plot. It makes sense as an endpoint, since the evolution from irresponsible teen to adult college student is a pretty easy piece of character development to throw into your movie. This is one of the bigger lies that nineties teen movie perpetuates, and it's another weird dichotomy: on the one hand, applying to college and making sure you get in is the most important thing in the world; on the other, the actual process is rarely seen, with deference instead taken to whatever romantic shenanigans or ugly duckling transformations make up the actual meat of the plot. The truth is, college isn't the be all and end all of high school. You don't have to go. A lot of people do, but not everyone. It's not the main thing you should be worrying about. Then again, if you're serious about it, you should probably mention it a little more often than basically any nineties teen movie character.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
