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Fresh (Douglas McLean)
School is “basically like the streets, just indoors.”
Douglas McLean, otherwise known as “Fresh,” is featured in First Person, a documentary film that unfolds through the eyes of Philadelphia public high school students struggling to make it to college. For more than two years, director Benjamin Herold and his crew followed Fresh and five other students through their homes, neighborhoods, and schools. Told entirely in the students’ own voices, First Person provides an inside perspective on the path from urban public high schools on to college – and to dropping out.
Once an aspiring police officer, Fresh joined the National Guard in high school but did not persist in part due to asthma.
“I hate my neighborhood. I can’t wait to move out. I know street life, and I want to know more, you know?
“I want to be a police officer because of what my mom does. She’s a drug addict. I want to be narcotics, so I can help take drugs off the street. If I don’t become a police officer, I don’t know what the [****] I’m going to do.”
Fresh never felt engaged in school. He dropped out of Kensington High in 2005. Not long after, he got his GED at Temple.
“School ain’t me….You turn around and look at somebody, they think you’re looking at them the wrong way, so they’re gonna say something: ‘You fighting that kid after school? He said he’ll knock you out….’ It’s basically like the streets, just indoors.
“The teachers would always look down on you. Say I got an ‘F’ in the beginning of the year, they’d be like ‘You ain’t gonna be nothing. You’re just another loser.’ I swear to God like three teachers did that. I was like, ‘This is retarded. I’m leaving.’
“No one really knew that I was going to drop out. It was a decision that I made on my own. I asked my Gram, and she said ‘it’s a big decision.’ I was like, ‘it’s whatever,’ and I just didn’t go back.”
Since dropping out, Fresh has worked odd jobs and tried to avoid the streets.
“I know what I want in life and I know how to get it. It’s just getting up and actually doing those things. Sometimes I do get up and make the effort, but I get stressed out and I’m like, ‘Forget this, I’m done.’
“My friend was selling Percocets and Xanax and he had $300 in his pocket. He made that in one night…I see him two weeks later, and he says ‘Come up to the crib, help me count up.’ In other words, count how many bundles of crack he had and then how much money he would make….That could be a week at McDonald’s I don’t have to work, you know what I’m saying?
“I think I’m strong, like not really fallin’ to the streets, like how most of my friends did. [They are] still selling drugs, still out there fighting, just doing a lot of dumb stuff that doesn’t really have to be done.”
Now 19, Fresh works at an appliance warehouse in Kensington. He thinks he might want to be a juvenile probation officer or teacher.
“Six years from now? I never thought that far ahead. Whatever happens, happens. I don’t really like thinking about that stuff because it never works out anyway.”
For more information on the film, visit firstpersondocumentary.org