High School Confidential, Episode 3: Jessi
In the third episode of High School Confidential we met Jessi. Jessi was “terribly, terribly shy” when she was a child so her mom put her in acting and she loved it. Her parents were engaged, but split up before Jessi was born. She never met her father.
When asked what she expected from her first year in high school, Jessi said she expected it to be terrifying. She also said she thinks there will be a lot of teen pregnancies and teen drug addicts. She was worried because she never felt like she fit in.
Her freshman year did not go well. She had some problems with friends and gossip. By the end of the year here grades were “not good.” She said, “people are mean and cliquey.”
After a trip to the doctor she was diagnosed with ADD. She was happy to finally have a reason for why she couldn’t concentrate and why her grades were so bad. She made a decision to work harder and stick with her medicine in hopes that the next year would be better.
For her sophomore year she transferred to “The Academy” which is an alternative. She was excited about this change because it was a smaller school where the teachers could focus on her. Plus the kids at The Academy were a lot more like her. There she was with other kids who also didn’t seem to fit in to the public school.
That year she met her first serious boyfriend, Aaron. They met at a punk concert. Aaron had wild pink hair that he often wore in big spikes. But after a while there was a chance that Jessi was pregnant and Aaron couldn’t handle it. He split and had a new girlfriend three days later…before he even knew whether or not Jessi really was pregnant. Luckily she wasn’t.
Jessi was devastated when Aaron left. She thought he was perfect. She thought he was the love of her life. She took the breakup very hard and went in to a deep depression. She was having suicidal thoughts so her mom took her to the hospital. She spent the night in the hospital and another seven days in a treatment center.
In her junior year Jessi started hanging out at a friends house where there was no supervision. There was a lot of drinking, drugs and sex going on in that house. Within months Jessi was pregnant. Ever since her pregnancy scare the previous year she was on the Pill, but she was also on antibiotics and her medication for depression which weakened the effectiveness of the Pill. Then, just as she was getting used to the idea of being a teen mom, she miscarried.
In her senior year Jessi decided to get more serious. She tried to stay away from alcohol and got a job as a sandwich artist at Subway. She also stuck to her medications. Her mother had divorced Jessi’s stepdad and met a new man online. She was planning to marry him and was moving to Georgia so she got Jessi an apartment as a graduation gift so Jessi could finish out her year in Kansas with her friends.
Jessi found out the AMDA (American Music Dramatic Academy), a performing arts college in Los Angeles, was holding auditions in town and she wanted to try out. She figured she wouldn’t fit in at a traditional university and she wanted to pursue her goal of being a performer. She went to the audition and won a spot in the college along with a scholarship.
Even with all her problems the first few years of high school, Jessi graduated from The Academy early and on the principal’s honor role. She gave a speech at graduation and said, “Don’t try to fit in. We were all born to stand out. Be yourself. If other’s don’t accept you for it, they’re the ones who are missing out.”
While explaining her four years of high school Jessi described it as, “going through turbulent times to try to find myself and try to find out who I am. And discover what I need to be happy.”
Jessi is now living in Los Angeles pursuing her acting dream.
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2 opinions for High School Confidential, Episode 3: Jessi
Pat
Apr 4, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Well, actually, she’s not. If you stayed to the end of the program, you would have seen that she had a panic attack after 10 days in L.A. and came home and is now working at Wal-Mart. For some reason my daughter thought that was hilarious, but the whole story was very sad. And her boyfriend had green hair, not pink.
Lauren
Apr 28, 2008 at 7:57 pm
LOVE that she says “AMDA only takes a selective group each year” - my ass! They take anyone and everyone and are one of the worst performing arts schools in the country.
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