Source: 15-year old Texas girl has been accepted into 38 universities, amassing a combined $1.6M in scholarship dollars
I think one of the funniest tropes of #TRYHARDSZN is how often times those reporting on these tryhards, they always try to make it sound like their combined scholarship value is free and clear, and they’re eligible to use all of it on the institution that they ultimately choose.
No, it doesn’t quite work that way, and just because someone has been accepted to 38 schools and the combined value of the offered scholarships is $1.6M doesn’t mean the person can take the offered scholarships from like Louisiana Tech, Furman, Oregon State and William & Mary and funnel them all into Columbia University.
The probably reality with most of these #TRYHARDSZN stories is that they’re accepted into a lot of higher-tier schools at little to no scholarship dollars at all, and it’s the lower-tier schools in which are offering up free rides or high dollar value scholarships, and the figures are extrapolated to whatever sounds the most impressive when combined together, but I digress.
Back to the story at hand, as tryhard-y as it is, the resume of this 15-year old is pretty impressive. Graduating from high school at 15, already notching 51 college credit hours, with a 4.0 GPA, and a bunch of extracurricular resume-boosting clubs to boot.
It’s funny to me that one of quotes of someone to vouch for her character is coming from one of her elementary school teachers; considering she was there like four weeks ago, it’s safe to say that they were still a fresh resource to reach out to gauge the character of this student.
Don’t get me wrong, on internet paper, this girl sounds like a very impressive person, to have accomplished so much at such a young age. But whether it’s her decision or it came at the encouragement of her parents, I’m perplexed on this seeming determination to speed-run through contemporary schooling and get to the stage of adulthood, even if the age is not commensurate.
It’s stated that she was able to get to this point because she didn’t have to complete the eighth grade, fifth grade and kindergarten, by virtue of exams, and I’m thinking, skipping kindergarten?? I vaguely remember kindergarten being merely supervised playing, painting with my hands, nap times where I didn’t once actually nap, and occasional practicing letters and numbers.
My oldest child who still sleeps in overnight diapers. She throws tantrums when she thinks she’s getting the smaller half of anything in comparison to her younger sister. She will be in kindergarten in two years. I’m amazed that there’s even an option to try to exam out of having to do kindergarten, because I can’t imagine what they’d even examine given the criteria of what kindergarteners do.
The point is, Little Miss Tryhard has basically not been given much of a chance to be a kid in her lifetime, and as impressive as it sounds that she’s basically trying to be Doogie Howser academically, she might accomplish graduating college by 17-18, but when school’s all out, and the only thing really left in life is to pursue a career, she is going to be a guppy in an ocean of inexperience, and when she steps into the working world where everyone is competition, she’s probably not going to be remotely mentally and emotionally prepared for what awaits.
Sure it sounds cool, and I’m sure it feels good to be praised and get a lot of e-accolades from anonymous strangers on the internet because she got accepted into a bunch of unnamed schools, but this is a situation where being such a tryhard can have some severe consequences later in life.
All living things need to breathe, and unwind and decompress from time to time, or else they’re going to work themselves crazy. But if you’re tryharding and trying to speed-run life, it’s almost like you’re rushing to get into the rat race, where most everyone becomes miserable and really begins to feel like their lives are on a downward trajectory instead of upward.
