Woohoo, finally, my time to shine!

So in tenth grade we had this class called CSL - College, Study, Life Skills - which was mandatory, just forty minutes a week. We were given two months to make a film on any mental disorder we chose. What did I go for? Coprolalia, the variant of Tourettes where you swear uncontrollably. What sort of project did I choose? Well, I've always loved films, so I went with that. I roped in a number of friends, threw together a script, and got my camera gear ready.

I'm not going to lie, I did it to be sensationalist. But not because I wanted a chance to use swear words in school without getting into trouble, rather because I wanted to make a statement about the school's closed-mindedness to student-directed projects. Just eight months earlier two friends and I had made a Claymation video for physics that the teachers liked so much, they all started encouraging video projects rather than the more common posters that were assigned. But there were still heavy restrictions in place on what we could do, so my friends and I went ahead and made this. And in fact we roped in a couple of teachers too. Not just that, but a whole class to be support actors.

Sure, this was tenth grade, the video was crap and the scripting was rushed, but people wanted to be in it. They wanted to have a chance to stick it to the school and tell them we wanted free reign over projects. No one seemed to want to be in it until we said "there'll be vulgar language". Then boom! they were on board.

The short of it is that we got this film done, hammered out all the editing work in just one night, and it went into my file of hastily-made videos that didn't do justice to the subject. Funnily enough it wasn't shown at the assembly on mental health. In fact it was never mentioned again, and as far as I know, the whole project was scrapped, no one got a grade (not our fault, very few other groups actually made an effort sooooo...). And yeah, the film was never seen by anyone but us. But we made it.

And since then, students have been a little more free to do what they want. Obviously there are restrictions on projects like ours, but we managed to change something - all of us, everyone in that film.

So yeah, that's my experience with Tourettes. And perhaps I should add that the project was at least tasteful and not offensive, and did try to convey a genuine message about the difficulties of Tourettes.