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officialalessandrocarvajal · 9 years ago

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I’ve seen this. Its about my school.

They made a documentary about my high school—The Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA for short) aka “Fame High”. It’s been a while since I’ve been in high school, but it was interesting to see how the school was portrayed in this doc. I recognized many of my past instructors.

If you have netflix it’s streaming here, but honestly—I only got through about five minutes of it. Maybe it was because I lived it and I found it a bit boring? Or maybe I’m a little bitter that is wasn’t shot when I was in attendance ;)

I expected the high school to be just like the 1980s movie “Fame“ that was actually in New York. But, it wasn’t. When I auditioned I dreamed of everyone dancing and singing "Fame” in the streets—just like in the movie, but that never happened. We also never sang “Hot Lunch“ in the cafeteria. At the time, the school was integrated on the campus of Cal State LA and so we were a weird mix of artsy kids among college students. There were no bells and I remember ditching my music theory and chemistry classes, a lot.

Just like any art school—they convinced us that we would be famous, but that only happened for a few. I auditioned as a vocalist and made it, but double majored in Visual Arts my senior year. They had an advertising class that I loved. I knew that was my true calling.

The straight boys there were also few and far between. Don’t get me wrong, I love gay men, but the hormones were flowing and I didn’t have the right “equipment”. My beautiful prom date who was the ASB president (I found this quite impressive at the time) was gay, which again, was totally fine—but after I graduated all I wanted was a straight as an arrow, jock type. Well, I found him and at 18 (he was 26), I ran away to Chico State, where he was attending college.

The school changed my life dramatically and I loved it, but I never banked on being “famous”. I just wanted to have fun and be a kid, but it was highly competitive and honestly, I was not the best. It shattered my dreams of being a singer and I knew I didn’t want to spend my life as a choir director.

Their visual art department saved my creative life (which I read in the reviews was sadly not featured at all). Creative concept design what I was truly meant to do and it’s exciting that all these years later—I’m doing it :)

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officialalessandrocarvajal · 9 years ago

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I love this guy. He is super funny