School life looks like a dream on social media, from perfectly organized notes and cozy lo-fi music to the iconic “school reset” videos that show up on everybody’s For You page.

But beneath the surface, when you really take a look at it, the messy notes, the overdue assignments building up in your Toddle inbox like the piles of clothes in the corner of your room—it makes it almost impossible to meet those expectations. The romanticised image of school can raise the pressure on students, making students feel like they’re falling behind if their experience does not match Rory Gilmore’s fictional ‘idealism’.

Is placing such high expectations actually helping us, or is it just creating an unrealistic image and building up stress? Let’s break down the good, the bad and what school really means for students nowadays.

Now, for the people who may not know who Rory Gilmore is, she is the star student with perfect grades and always with a book in hand from the popular TV show Gilmore Girls. 

Rory is viewed by many people as academic perfection, whether it is how she is always prepared, or her smarts, or maybe it’s how she somehow manages to juggle school, family, and a love triangle all at once. She’s the kind of character who makes high school look flawless, an ideal that stuck with a lot of viewers, especially students who look up to that lifestyle. And she’s all over your TikTok feed.

How Romanticizing School Inspires Productivity

Grade 9 student, Alessandro V., put it simply:

“The only thing worth romanticizing in school is the after-school routine. Finding joy in the quiet moments when you’re doing math exercises, or rehearsing for a presentation. I’d say to romanticize discipline, repetition, and consistency because that’s where real progress comes from.”

In today’s world, TikTok has become a platform where an overwhelming amount of people reach out for motivation regarding various topics. This is where the term ‘StudyTok’ comes from – a popular search term nowadays, which I have personally also used. Sometimes I just needed a refresh, to make school and studying look like something out of a movie so that I could finally bring myself to stop procrastinating. 

Here are the five things TikTok user @amiraadiaries recommends students do to ‘help romanticize school’:

1. Color code your notes by each subject
2. Keep a physical planner (and use it) *I also put sticky notes around for reminders
3. Use visuals and diagrams so you don’t have to read 24/7
4. Keep assortments of colors for notes and doodles
5. Use a virtual planner / journal to customize your aesthetics

This TikTok, similar to the ones I have used in the past when needing motivation, encourages us to motivate ourselves and bring ourselves to study which is exactly why so many students turn to it.

And clearly, people do actually feel motivated by it. In a survey conducted by The Bite, 68.8% of students said that romanticizing school has actually motivated them whether that means getting out of bed, reorganizing their notes, or simply feeling more put together.

When school starts to feel overwhelming, adding on beauty to the idea of school can shift the entire idea of studying, the work may not become easier, but it becomes easier to think of. At the end of the day it isn’t about creating a perfect idea of your life for social media but about building habits that will help you stay motivated, making it easier to show up for yourself and maintain your work.

When Romanticising School Becomes a Problem

But here’s the part people don’t always talk about, the downside of it all. While StudyTok can feel comforting and motivating when first taking a glance at it, it can also start to create this picture perfect version of school and life overall that nobody will actually be able to live up to. 

In a survey that was put out by The Bite, one grade 11 student spoke of the pitfalls:

“[Romanticising school] can lead to disappointment or frustration when you don’t meet those expectations and feel even less enjoyment”

And honestly? I agree. In a perfect world this idea of school, where you can study for three hours straight with flawless cursive handwriting covered in bold colours, a latte by your side, could be done easily—but this isn’t most people’s reality, and I myself have fallen for this.

Trying to wake up at 6am every morning, having perfect notes, and attempting to upkeep my grades to be a perfect student, quickly fell apart at the seams. To be able to maintain this became impossible and that is when I was hit with my well needed reality check.

Real school is messy, real studying can be boring sometimes, and it doesn’t help when everything online looks so perfect, it can make your normal routine feel like it’s not enough. In fact, research helps back this up. 

A recent study led out by psychologists Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill backs this up in a way that helps open people’s eyes. They looked at a little more than 40,000 college students from over 164 samples across nearly three decades and found that perfectionism has risen by 33% since the 1980s, especially the kind that comes from social environments. And according to their research, social media played a big role in the rise because it constantly showed these curated, flawless versions of student life which consisted of needing perfect grades, a perfect routine, basically a perfect everything.

Which yet again was impossible to maintain. So when we scroll through TikTok and see people with these spotless lives it is easy to feel like our own routines aren’t enough; Curran and Hills study prove that, they have even found out that this “socially prescribed” perfectionism is leading up to real mental health struggles like anxiety and depression. What I am trying to say is that the more we feel pressured to match what we see online, the worse we tend to feel about ourselves. 

The results that came back from The Bite survey help show the same pattern. When asked the question “Do you feel like the way school looks in movies or online is way different from real life?” answers varied, yet a huge portion leaned towards yes, pointing out how it can set standards that people cannot realistically meet.

Seeing these numbers helped make something clear to me. That even if romanticizing school can motivate us students, it can also push students into feeling like they’re failing at something that wasn’t even there to begin with.

At the end of the day, romanticizing school isn’t completely good or bad. It can make studying feel more enjoyable and motivate us into doing our work, but it can also create pressure, unrealistic expectations and at one point lead to burnout if we standardize such aesthetics. 

What really matters is finding a balance in between both, bop your head to music while studying, find cozy study setups, and most importantly relax, but don’t forget that learning doesn’t always look the same. Some days your notes will be messy, others your desk will be a mess, and usually your motivation will barely even exist, and that’s normal.

School isn’t meant to be perfect. It’s meant to have ups and downs just like a rollercoaster.

And I believe the most “romantic” thing about school isn’t the aesthetic at all, but the fact that us as students keep going, even when it doesn’t look like a movie.