{"id":7717,"date":"2025-07-24T12:40:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T17:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=7717"},"modified":"2025-07-24T12:42:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T17:42:00","slug":"the-summer-i-turned-cherub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/the-summer-i-turned-cherub\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Summer I Turned Cherub&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A series of \u201cboos\u201d filled the Great Room when the loathed Jeremiah Fisher from \u201cThe Summer I Turned Pretty\u201d appeared on the TV. The show\u2019s third season was finally here, and I had never felt so united with my fellow cherubs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">During previous summers, my idea of a \u201cTSITP\u201d watch party consisted of me alone in the comfort of my bed, accompanied by a huge candy salad bowl.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This time, however, I was watching with about 70 other teens. And it couldn\u2019t have been any better.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">You would\u2019ve thought we were watching the Super Bowl, the way we erupted in cheers and applause every time Belly and Conrad shared a moment on screen. At one point, I swear the room shook.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Passing around communal packs of Oreos and Goldfish, we cried out in agony when yet another character cheated on a partner, and groaned every time a T-Mobile ad interrupted a scene. Even my friends who hadn\u2019t watched the show before told me they felt invested.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It didn&#8217;t matter that we all came from different places. That night, we were one. We all felt Belly\u2019s heartbreak, laughed at the characters\u2019 cringy lines and engaged in fierce battles over Team Jeremiah or Team Conrad. (Let\u2019s be real though, we know who\u2019s the better brother.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Post-cherubs, I\u2019ll unfortunately have to return to my solo watch parties. But I\u2019ll never forget the screaming laughter coming from the Great Room that Wednesday night.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To quote a line from the books the show was based on, \u201cIt was a summer I\u2019d never, ever forget.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During a watch party, \u201cThe Summer I Turned Pretty\u201d helped me feel bonded to other cherubs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":10283,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[465],"class_list":["post-7717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":465,"user_id":204,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jocelynchen","display_name":"Jocelyn Chen","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/aa7e49144010cde774d86e5653af8af52124480428a375d6206f039a9dfbd792?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Chen","first_name":"Jocelyn","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7717"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9488,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7717\/revisions\/9488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7717"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=7717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}