Interview With Someone Who Recently Experienced Prom
What years did you go to prom?
- My school was very lenient on who was allowed to go to prom and who wasn’t so I was able to go to prom in my 2nd to 3rd year.
Did you ask out your partner or did she (or he) ask you?
- I asked her out in 11th and 12th grade but in sophomore year I went as a stag in a group of other stags.
How was the experience of being a stag different from going with a partner?
- It wasn’t that different actually… Except for the part where I felt a bit awkward in the beginning for not having a date but as the night went out and I got to dance with senior and junior girls that were a foot taller than me, I realized that talking with friends is better than dancing. In junior year I asked out a girl that I didn’t really like so I didn’t dance with her too much. I ended up spending the rest of the night with my friends talking like I did on the 10th grade. In the 12th grade however, I went with the girl that I was going out with for almost 3 months and I spent all of the night with her.
Which prom did you enjoy the most?
- I enjoyed the 2nd one the most. No offence to my ex-girlfriend but I think prom should be about having fun. I am not a dancer and she wanted to dance so I didn’t really have as much fun as I would have liked to.
Why did you like the second prom better than the first one, if you ended up doing the same thing?
- Because in my second prom I wasn’t the little kid without a date. In 11th grade, I was the kid who has a date but “he’d rather do his own thing and have fun with his real friends”.
Did you ever watch any movies about prom or read any articles about prom?
- I never read any articles on prom but I did watch a few movies but they weren’t for the intentions of learning about prom, they were just to watch and “enjoy”.
Were your experiences similar or different to the ones you saw in the movies?
- Both similar and different. Similar in a way that there was a lot of drama with who’s going with whom, not with me, but with some of my classmates. And different in a way that I didn’t do the whole fussing about asking someone out.
If you could change your prom experiences, how would you change it?
- I don’t think I would change any of my experiences because I experienced all sides of it. I want to keep it that way.
Thank you for the interview
Interview With Luis Torres (Someone Who Is Going To Prom This Academic Year)
How are your feelings about going to prom this year?
- I’m a little excited and also a little nervous about going to prom, which is weird because I am a very outgoing person in my school and feeling shy about a social event is weird for me.
Why do you think you’re nervous?
- I don’t know… Maybe it’s because there are a lot of expectations and “rules” that you have to follow in order to “have a good time”.
What do you mean when you say rules?
- I basically mean that people always look at guys to make sure they are treating their date properly and to make sure that they are dancing with them at all times, otherwise you will have to deal with the embarrassment of being called a lame date. Which I find ridiculous because the whole point of prom, to me at least, is to have a final fun night with all of the people you spent the past four years of your life with and you shouldn’t need to be restricted by any sort of rules.
What do you plan on doing at prom?
- Have fun with my friends of course.
Did you ask out a girl yet?
- I did but it’s more of a friend thing because that’s what we agreed on. So I will be spending most of the night with her and my other friends, and we’ll all basically have a good time.
Do you know of any girl that asked out a guy?
- I heard of one girl doing that but I don’t know if that was true or not.
Why do you think it is the guy’s duty to ask out the girl? Why not the other way around?
- I don’t know but I’m sure prom is something that dates back to medieval times. Not the exact version of today but the general idea, at least. Knights would ask out his lady to King’s Ball or something and the lady would make sure she looked pretty for the glorious night…
Are you going to your school’s after prom? If so, are your deeds in after prom going to be respectable?
- I am going to after prom but not with the rest of my grade. I’ll be going to a restaurant with around five of my closest friends. As for whether our actions will be respectable or not, I think they will be but you never know…
I hope your actions will be respectable, and I hope you have a good time at your senior prom. Thanks for the interview.
Luis Torres’ Grandmother’s Interview on Prom (Conducted by Luis but I gave him the questions)
Grandma Torres as she wanted to be called for this interview attended prom in 194 and 19. She attended both the Junior and Senior proms.
What do you remember about your high school proms?
- We danced in my school’s gym. There was a disk-jockey (D.J.) and we listened to old records. The girls all wore similar dresses and the guys all looked as if they bought their tuxedos from the same tailor. It wasn’t much different from how it was every day in school since I attended a private school where we had to wear uniforms.
What did you wear?
- My Junior Year, I wore a yellow dress. Senior Year, I had a blue one. Both were made by my mother. We also wore flats, no heels -- we called them 'ballerinas'. My date wore a white tuxedo suit jacket and black pants.
Did you have a Class Song or Theme? What did the decorations look like?
- We did have a Senior Class song but I can't remember what it was at the moment. The prom wasn't really decorated well - just crepe paper on basketball poles and loop-de-looped around the bleachers of the gym. There wasn't a particular theme but I guess it was what you kids would call the 50’s theme.
Who'd you go with?
- I went with your father’s (Luis’ father) biological father, both years. He is a bit older than me and he was in college and since he had already been to two of his proms during his time in high school, he was an expert on proms. He was also a great dancer. We danced till midnight which was when prom ended.
Did he ask you to go with him? Or did you ask him?
- He asked me. No girl asked the guy out. I don’t think girls do that now either, it’s very tacky.
Was there any kind of after-prom?
- No, prom ended at midnight like I said and all the boys drove or walked their girl home. We didn’t have any parties after prom like you kids have no, for us, prom WAS the party, what else would we do in an after prom?
Final question, did you have fun? And if you could change one aspect of your prom, what would it be?
- Of course I had fun! It was one of the best nights of my life! And I wouldn’t change anything. It was perfect.
After hearing and reading all the different perspectives of the interviewees, I began to think back to my initial thoughts post. How were my initial thoughts similar or different to that of my interviewees? The interviews with the two people who were closer to my age had similar things to say about prom than my friend’s grandmother. Some similarities between my thoughts and my friends’ thoughts are that all three of us feel as if prom is not really that big of a deal. It is hyped up by media and also past seniors who like to pretend that they had fun but the fact of the matter is, they just spent a night with their friends. Not like they haven’t done that in the four or more years they have spent with those people. Another similarity I noticed is that Luis (going to prom this semester) also does not like the rules that we have to follow in order to have fun with friends. Your classmates will make stigmatize you if you show up to prom without a date, or if you do not spend every minute with your date, or if you do not wear something fancy. Luis confessed that he will be trying his best to break these scripted rules so that he can have fun the way he wants to have fun.
One major difference between Josh, Luis, and me is that they both have wanted to go to prom ever since they heard about it. I on the other hand was not very keen on attending the whole shenanigans. Their main reason for wanting to attend is that they get to spend one last night with their friends. My counterargument to that is why not just get the people you actually like and host a party? Instead of getting a mix of people you cannot stand and some that you can bear. Luis’ grandmother’s interview was interesting because from what it sounded like, her experiences were not so different from Josh’s experiences and the experiences of people depicted in movies about prom. Which means that unlike many other traditions, prom is one of the things that has remained a similar tradition in multiple time periods.
