STUPID SMART

Writing this script was an exercise in nostalgia. It was also a therapy session. I wrote this in my last semester at film school, when I felt rather daring, and decided to delve into a more personal story. 

Stupid Smart was born out of my life. More specifically, my academic history. When I was fourteen, I started ninth grade at a rather oddly structured high school. Students entering ninth grade went through Boot Camp. It wasn’t really boot camp, we just called it that because the ninth-grade year prepared you for the next three, in which you became a college student. Not a dual-enrolled student, not a visiting student, a full-blown college student. In tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade, you went to college classes on a college campus, registered for your own classes among other college students, and earned credits toward your college transcript.

As you can imagine, a school like this attracts a certain kind of student—bright, ambitious, and a little crazy. My school took smart students from the tri-county area and put them all in one room. You were no longer the smartest kid in the room, you were just normal. The ninth grade year is considered the worst year because the workload is so intense. But we endure it because of the school’s promise: a college degree by the time we are eighteen or nineteen. It’s common for students to graduate with their college degree a day before they graduate with their high school diploma. 

As you can imagine, the pressure at this school is immense. The weight of success is crushing, and the need to Be Something is overwhelming. And Stupid Smart is every single feeling crammed into 60 pages.

Most of the characters in Stupid Smart are based on real people. Some are fabricated. Most of the storylines are actual events I experienced or someone I knew did. Some are made up. I would not be where I am and who I am today without this school. Stupid Smart is my attempt to explain that.