"I spent most of my high school years on movie sets and I'd have like one teacher, which was really bad"
About this Quote
The intent is simple but pointed: to puncture the fantasy that a working teen in Hollywood is getting the “best of both worlds.” Sawa frames his education as something squeezed into the margins of production, not protected by it. The subtext is that the system didn’t just trade school for opportunity; it replaced childhood structure with an adult workplace that had incentives to keep the assembly line moving. “Like” and “really” matter here. They signal someone reaching for honesty over polish, resisting the PR-friendly version of his own past.
Contextually, Sawa’s coming-of-age happened in the 1990s boom of teen stardom, when on-set tutoring satisfied legal requirements but often functioned as a checkbox. His phrasing suggests he’s not asking for pity; he’s sketching the long tail of that arrangement: gaps in education, social development, and the eerie lesson that your life is secondary to the shoot schedule. The quote works because it treats glamour as the setup and neglect as the punchline.
Quote Details
| Topic | Student |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sawa, Devon. (2026, January 17). I spent most of my high school years on movie sets and I'd have like one teacher, which was really bad. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-spent-most-of-my-high-school-years-on-movie-59127/
Chicago Style
Sawa, Devon. "I spent most of my high school years on movie sets and I'd have like one teacher, which was really bad." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-spent-most-of-my-high-school-years-on-movie-59127/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I spent most of my high school years on movie sets and I'd have like one teacher, which was really bad." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-spent-most-of-my-high-school-years-on-movie-59127/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.






