The Art of Getting By

“We live alone, we die alone. Everything else is just an illusion.” George, the protagonist of the movie was haunted by this quote. He came to the realization that he was going to die someday and that everything seems meaningless to him now. Because of this mind setting, he ceases to complete his assignments which led to him being put to academic probation. He was fatalistic and he feels like he has better things to do with his time than making meaningless homework and that he has a problem with motivating. Then he met this girl that changed him.

He met Sally at the school rooftop, he covered up for her smoking on school grounds because he’s been into a lot of trouble before and he thinks he can handle it better than her. They hung out a lot after that encounter and became really good friends. But when two opposite sexes are really good friends, either one of them is going to fall in love with the other right? George felt like they were something more, while Sally thinks otherwise. The former didn’t have the guts to say how he felt so Sally ended up with someone else.

When George realized that everything he went through with Sally was just nothing for her, he didn’t speak to her and ignored her calls for days. He became depressed and his performance in school worsened.  One day he got into an argument with his stepfather and broke his stepfather’s collarbone, he immediately ran to Sally’s place and that’s when he found out that Sally was going out with Dustin, George’s friend whom he introduced to Sally when they first visited his place to check out his paintings. That was a wake up call for him; he went to school the next day to tell his principal that he was going to do a year’s worth of assignment so he could earn his diploma on graduation day which is three weeks away and he’s still has to take the final exams. This was the most inspiring part of the movie.

He worked hard; he did a year’s worth of assignment for three weeks and got his diploma on graduation day. As a student, this movie was very inspiring because as what the principal told George as he was receiving his diploma, “Anything is possible”. We tend to complain over one single assignment that was due next month but he did everything in three weeks, all we need is that something to push us to work hard, and that is motivation. And as to what happened between him and Sally? I’ll leave that for you to watch the movie and find out.