What I learned from watching Accepted
Accepted is a 2006 teen movie that received notoriously negative reviews. Although these poor ratings could seem justified on the at first, the movie has a deeper underlying message often ignored by the reviewers.
What is it about?
Accepted is the story of a high school senior, Bartleby Gaines, who was rejected from every college he applied to. Desperate to make his conservative parents happy, he creates a fake college and accepts himself. His college, dubbed South Harmon Institute of Technology (S.H.I.T.) is complete with facilities and even a website. Little did he know that his website was fully functional and accepted all applicants. Soon enough, he finds a large crowd of people lined up outside his college, all accepted and there with their tuition fees. These people are of all walks of life, mostly social misfits that have lead lives of rejection.
S.H.I.T. eventually catches the attention of a properly accredited, neighboring college and is taken to court.
The ending shall not be revealed. If you are interested, watch the movie. 
I can agree with critics saying that this movie promotes laziness and underachievement, but there is a great underlying message often ignored. At court, the content Bartleby’s speech is in a class seldom seen in teen movies. Below is a collage of the most important bits.
I’m not going to answer your question, ’cause you guys have already made up your minds. I’m an expert in rejection, and I can see it on your faces. And it’s too bad that you judge us by the way we look and not by who we are. Just because you want us to be more like them when the truth is we’re not like them. And I am damn proud of that fact. I mean, Harmon College and their 100 years of tradition. But tradition of what? Of hazing kids and humiliating anyone who’s a bit different? Of putting so much pressure on kids they turn into these stress freaks and caffeine addicts.
You rob these kids of their creativity and their passion. Well, what about you parents? Did the system really work out for you? Did it teach you to follow your heart, or to just play it safe, roll over? What about you guys? Did you always want to be school administrators? Dr. Alexander, was that your dream? Or maybe no, maybe you wanted to be a poet. Maybe you wanted to be a magician or an artist. Maybe you just wanted to travel the world. Look, I lied to you. I lied to all of you, and I’m sorry. Dad, especially to you. But out of that desperation, something happened that was so amazing. Life was full of possibilities. And isn’t that what you ultimately want for us? As parents, I mean, it’s that, it’s possibilities. Well, we came here today to ask for your approval, and something just occurred to me. I don’t give a shit. Who cares about your approval? We don’t need your approval to tell us that what we did was real. ‘Cause there are so few truths in this world, that when you see one, you just know it. And I know that it is a truth that real learning took place at South Harmon. Whether you like it or not, it did. ‘Cause you don’t need teachers or classrooms or fancy highbrow traditions or money to really learn. You just need people with a desire to better themselves, and we got that at South Harmon. So you can go ahead, sign your forms, reject us and shoot us down, and do whatever you gotta do. It doesn’t really matter at this point. Because we’ll never stop learning, and we’ll never stop growing, and we’ll never forget the ideals what were instilled in us at our place.
In the future, I see more power being instilled in the induvidual, the citizens. We saw citizen journalism (blogging) soar in popularity over the past years (at times even challenging traditional print media), we read more and more about the success of small-scale home businesses, and then see the internet reinvented through Web 2.0 - which is all about user interaction.
In its essence, the movie teaches us to follow our dreams rather than playing it safe. This could not be a more valuable lesson. Today, the world is such a dynamic place and possibilities are virtually unlimited. Bartleby’s speech mentions the words creativity and passion, which no doubt are the keys to success in the future. Traditional, methodological knowledge is becoming less and less important as anyone with enough time and effort can master it. Demand is diminishing while supplies are rising exponentially as the third world quickly gets educated. In fact, much of maths, chemistry and physics can even be done by computers.
Instead, creativity and passion are the true components of genius. They can not be replicated and will be valuable and scarce items in the future.
So if your looking for a movie to watch, watch this! Accepted is a no-brainer comedy movie with some honest fun, perfect for when you want to sit back and relax. There are no complex plots, no thrills or twists. At the same time, the movie can leave one inspired.
The slacker followed his dreams and created a college, what will you do?
