As of right now, I am living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Southside area of the city. I absolutely love it! I’m on summer break right now, and I have an internship with the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh that I love! I am also entering my senior year at the University of Pittsburgh.
The biggest change in my life since finishing the show has been moving to a new city, and I never visit Kansas anymore. But besides that I’m pretty much the same–I still plan on finishing college. Since I’m never in Kansas, I’m in touch with the other cast members mainly on Facebook.
Being a part of the show didn’t really affect my high school experience, but I do miss my friends from home. I would definitely tell people who are about to start high school to be themselves and have fun.
Being a part of the show hasn’t really affected my life outside of my high school experience. I had some people ask me questions on Myspace and Facebook, but nothing else. I have no regrets about doing the show; I lived my life the way I wanted to at the time.
If I could change anything about my High School Confidential experience, I would not have made the decision to share the fact that I had an abortion because that became the whole focus on my character for the show and the actual experience was only for two months out of the four years I was in high school.
After I receive my degree next spring, I hope to get a good job that involves helping people and have fun on the way to my elderly status, ha ha.
Though I was the only black girl on the show, it didn’t really make a big difference for me. I have been the only black girl in a lot of aspects of my life, lol, so I’m used to it. And the show never really focused on my skin color, so I didn’t either.
One thing that I would like to make clear about the show is that my father passed away during my freshman year in college, so I am not sure why it was portrayed as if he died while I was still in high school. I was not still filming the show; they just decided to be involved once I came home for the funeral. And also, I am no longer afraid to grow old! I am very excited to move forward with my life.
There isn’t that much to the story of my pregnancy. I got pregnant in June 2004 and had the abortion in July 2004. I didn’t share my story with HSC until after the abortion had already taken place. For the most part I stayed at home and contemplated whether I wanted to terminate or not. My parents let me choose for myself, and the young man who was the father was not involved at all. It was a small piece of my high school experience that I felt HSC made a huge deal about. My high school experience was not just about boys, being pregnant, and my father dying. I was highly involved with the track team (in which I placed in the State Meet multiple times, set many records, and was offered scholarships to many different schools), was a straight-A student (for which I was also offered scholarships), was very family- and friend-oriented (still am), and I also had so much fun those entire four years. When my episode aired I was confused and disappointed as to why they made me look like the pregnant black girl who lost her father. The show made it seem like I had this life of hardship when really the good by far outweighed the bad. I am not upset at all because yes, those things did happen, and I am in no way ashamed of them, but that isn’t the only side of me; actually it is only a small part of what happened to me in high school. I am still doing very well in school and am enjoying my life. I would like all my fans to know that.
For more on Allyson, click here.
