Tag: tryharding

#TRYHARDSZN2024: Never too early to start

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

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.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: the blind veterinarian

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No offense, but I’ll take my pets elsewhere: Texas woman accepted into the Texas Tech School of Veterinary Medicine

Okay, so this isn’t a story about some overachieving youth applying to all of the Ivy Leagues and 75+ other schools just to see how many acceptances they can get so that they can humble brag about them on the internet, but I still felt it warranted the pound sign, because the fact that someone who is legally blind is determined to be a veterinarian is pretty bonkers in my opinion.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect determination, perseverance and chasing a dream; but when it comes to the care of my pets, I most definitely am not thinking twice about looking for an alternate opinion if I knew that my veterinarian, were blind.

I admire this girl’s determination and her positive mentality, but the reality is that if I have a pet going through some health problems, I’m going to have a hard time accepting the words and analysis of someone who can’t really see what they’re dealing with, with my pets.  I can’t believe that they’re going to be like fucking Daredevil, and have the ability to sonar my dog’s kidney issues, or my cat’s urinary tract infection, and that their other senses will be hyper productive to where they don’t need eyesight to be able to do their job.

And she wants to be a mixed-animal vet, that cares for large and small animals, which is to say she wants to take care of horses and goats and other animals that are outside the typical veterinary realm of dogs and cats.  Like, what is she going to do when she is called to check up on a skittish horse or goat and gets the fuck kicked out of her because she can’t really see it escalating.

No offense, but it just seems like not the wisest career choice in the world in my opinion.  There are all sorts of other occupations out in the world that someone with limited sight can do, while not being responsible for the life of another living being.

But hey, I’m just a rando guy on the internet with no readers, typing away into the aether for over twenty years.  But what this girl is doing, insisting on following a career path where the ability to see is generally among the unwritten top job qualifications, definitely constitutes #TRYHARDSZN2024.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: 149 out of 149 accepted

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Jesus: San Diego high school senior applied to 149 colleges, accepted to all 149

Naturally, the first thing my mind thinks is, who the fuck is paying for 149 college applications?  But then I remember that when it comes to all of these #TRYHARDSZNers, they’re most likely not having to pay for ANY college applications at all because certain programs in this country are fair, balanced, and couldn’t possibly be exploited inequitably.

Of course, it can’t not be mentioned that the current value of all 149 current college acceptances is over $3M in scholarships; but honestly, that really doesn’t sound like that much, considering we’re talking about 149 colleges here.  Obviously, all scholarships are not equal, but even dividing $3M by 149, we’re getting an average of just $20k per, and assuming the higher-tier schools probably aren’t offering anything, while lower tier ones are offering more, $3M from 149 school actually doesn’t seem like that much in the grand spectrum of things.

All things considered though, this TRYHARD’s credentials are pretty impressive:

a 4.86 GPA, is taking AP classes and is part of the San Diego Police Department Cadet Program.

I don’t even know how these kids today get so high above a 4.0 GPA.  Even my high school class’s valedictorian was like a 4.3, and she got accepted into Harvard

But this TRYHARD is also on her high school’s varsity basketball, softball and lacrosse teams on top of her academics, and that probably doesn’t hurt her cause when it comes to all these applications.

Either way though, I roll my eyes when kids are getting into 50+ schools, but this chick has tripled even the local TRYHARDs with her 149+ applications.  Must be real nice knowing that you don’t have to pay any application fees, and now that schools all across America are ditching their legacy programs, I can only imagine how much more aggressive #2024TRYHARDSZN is going to get in coming months.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: At least he picked an Ivy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Eyeroll: Chicago teenager accepted into six Ivy League schools among others; chooses Harvard

At first, I was about to go ha-ha about how he only got into six of the Ivy League schools, but supposedly this kid only applied to just six of them.  For whatever reason, he did not apply to Brown or Dartmouth, and my thought is that those are the two Ivies that are probably a little too far up north in New England for a black kid from Chicago to feel any comfort at, should he have gone to either of them. 

Still though, going six-for-six on the Ivy League schools he did apply to, yep, that’s still #TRYHARDSZN2024.

Stanford and Morehouse were also named as schools he applied to, and were accepted into, but they do say and more, so we have no definitive number of just how many schools he applied to, and were accepted into, but it’s irrelevant because he still went after 3/4th of the Ivy League and that alone is enough to make any kid a mega tryhard.

The thing is though, in most of these cases, a lot of these mega tryhards do what they do, because they don’t have to pay for application fees, which absolves the most primary of risks of applying to college, and the worst thing that can happen to them is that simply don’t get accepted.  Otherwise, they can sit back and amass acceptance after acceptance, and if the number is impressive enough, they make the internet, and I get to call them mega tryhards, and use them as fodder for the hashtag on a personal brog that nobody reads.

But what I was going to say is that in most of these cases, the kids apply to a thousand schools, get accepted into 50 of them, and ultimately only go to the ones that are actually giving them a free ride.  Sometimes, if the families of these tryhards have some money, they’ll go to one of the more prestigious names they were accepted into, but in most of these cases they’re really phishing for any schools that are willing to give them large scholarships, if not a free ride outright, and ultimately they usually end up going to a lesser-heralded school because free school > student loan entrapment imprisonment debt.

However, this particular kid, has chosen to actually redeem his acceptance into Harvard, of all schools.  This isn’t to say that he wasn’t worthy of some sort of scholarship, but usually in a lot of these mega tryhard stories, the underlying truth is that they were simply accepted, and not necessarily given any sort of incentive.  Such details are not disclosed in this specific story, but what is explained is that he will be playing basketball for Harvard, so there’s always the possibility that he’s getting some degree of scholarship from one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, because he’s decent at hoops.

To which I actually do give this kid some credit for actually cashing in his #TRYHARDSZN2024 ticket to go to one of the most prestigious schools on the planet, and not just doing it for the cheap attention as a publicity stunt.  Go forth, young man, and hopefully you will dominate the lesser-tier competition of Ivy League athletics, instead of getting boiled alive at a school with a real athletic program like the ACC’s Stanford (lol), while gaining one of the most invaluable reputable proofs of education in the world.

But you’re still a mega tryhard.

#TRYHARDSZN2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Feels like it’s starting earlier than usual: two South Fulton teenagers accepted into 63 and 50 colleges respectively, trying really hard to not humble brag about it

It’s apparently already started, that time of year, in which throughout the country there are overachieving high school seniors who begin announcing, as loudly as they can on social media, just how many colleges they have been accepted to.  Some aim for the stars and only go for the cream of the crop like just the Ivy Leagues, and usually upper echelon schools like MIT, Johns Hopkins and Stanford, and then there are others who just apply for every school under the sun, as if there were no such thing as application fees.

And once the acceptances start rolling in, if the number is impressive enough, then onto the internets they go, boasting-not-boasting and humble bragging about how many schools they’ve been accepted into, with the hopes that some media outlet catches wind of it and puts any sort of spotlight onto them at all.

Of course, it can’t be ignored the dollar amounts of all these scholarships love to be extrapolated and added together, so that there can be somewhat of a tangible number to implement a degree of success and value of their accomplishments as a whole, and regardless of if and when they inevitably choose to go to whichever school is giving a full ride, no matter how lesser-heralded it may be, doesn’t change the fact that they put themselves into a position where they could brag about how many schools, simply said yes, you may attend our prestigious institution of higher education if you are willing to pay our egregious costs for credit hours, books, boarding and other bullshit expenditures.

But let’s get #TRYHARDSZN2024 off with a bang, with these two teens in my old stomping grounds of South Fulton county, which is the area’s PC way of lumping together the hood sections of the Southwestern region of the Metro Atlanta area.  But despite the fact that when watching the video in the article, there appears to be a whole legion of tryhards that have been accepted into 10-15+ colleges, these two particular teens who have hit 63 and 50 acceptances get the spotlight as being the biggest tryhards of the tryhards.

Sure, most of the schools that I was able to catch in the article are mostly smaller school, HBCUs, and schools nobody has really ever heard of, there were some notable Power-5 schools that have shown interest in them like Michigan State, Iowa, Kansas, Oregon and Mississippi State to name a few. 

Continue reading “#TRYHARDSZN2024” →

Of course Ichiro dominated

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Unsurprising: 50-year old Ichiro throws a complete-game shutout against a team of Japan’s girls’ high school all-stars in a 4-0 victory.  Final pitching line:

9.0 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 9 K, 116 P

In America, there was a game where retired MLB players went up against the best female high schoolers in the country, it probably would be much more relaxed, most of the retired MLB players would probably be poking around the bush to find out which of the girls were of legal age, and the general competitive nature of the game wouldn’t be very high. 

You’d see guys like Mark Buerhle and Jayson Werth and Nick Swisher, all out of shape, retirement guts starting to peek over their belt lines, and laughing at everything, trying to get in the good graces of barely legal teenagers.  Their pitches would be meatballs, get crushed, and they’d laugh and wave their arms around dismissively, pretending like they’re just having a good time.  At the plate, they’d goof off and hit from their opposite sides, and not really be very effective. 

The final score might still be like 5-3 for the old guys because there would inevitably one tryhard on the team like Craig Biggio who is still in great shape and that wants to win, and will hit a late-inning go-ahead home run, but the whole vibe of the event would be very exhibition, everyone has fun, the girls all get to take selfies with former pros, and one or two lucky former pro gets the digits of some 18-year old with loose morals and daddy issues.

But in Japan, a team of former players led by Ichiro, and including at least Daisuke Matsuzaka because I don’t care enough to try and dig up what the rest of the roster might have consisted of, going up against a team of the best high school girl players in the nation, is basically walking onto just another battlefield.  No different than going up against the Allied Powers, the Orix Buffaloes, the New York Yankees or Cleveland Indians.

I love how Ichiro basically pulls the beer league softball captain mentality out and obviously has to be the pitcher, because as everyone remembers in little league, the pitcher is usually the best player on the team.  Just because the opposition is a bunch of girls, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get the horns.

And then he proceeds to pitch like Walter Johnson against a bunch of teenagers, throwing 86 mph fastballs and nasty breaking sliders against a bunch of kids who have probably seen neither in their high school-caliber careers.  Ichiro is the guy that is brought in to make them feel excited to get to meet a national hero and treasure, but once the game gets going, he starts demoralizing them because his foot is completely floored on the gas, and they realize that he’s kind of a tryhard dick for going so ham against them.

Frankly, after the game, Ichiro probably beat himself with a whip like that dude from the DaVinci Code because he gave up five hits and walked two to a bunch of teenage girls.  Or the fact that he only got two hits instead of four, because you know he probably thought he was going to hit for the cycle against the lower velocity of high school girls, compared to the heat he faces in Spring Training or in all the games that the Mariners apparently still let him attend to in full playing gear.

The point it, it’s about as surprising as finding out that the American Healthcare system is a complete joke of a racket, that Ichiro tryharded like a motherfucker against a team of high school girls.  To his credit, he would have gone full tryhard against anyone regardless of their age, sex or any other category, but there’s no telling the quality of the numbers he would have put up.  The guy lives and breathes baseball, and I still maintain that when the day comes in which his body is unable to play the game or do any baseball activities, Ichiro will go homicidal.

5 associate degrees? Why no bachelor??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: 12-year old California tryhard kid graduates from community college with five associates degrees

It seems like every single year, people get more and more competitive about academic achievements, but to a degree where it’s not actually cool anymore, and just kind of attention seeking and insufferable.  And the internet doesn’t help, as there are countless platforms for these tryhards to flex and humblebrag about the things they’re accomplishing; don’t get me wrong, it’s great that people are flexing something useful like educations, but if they’re only doing it for the sake of getting people to sing their praises then it’s really no different than inventing an obnoxious viral dance or something.

Here in Atlanta, every year, my old neighborhood’s Nextdoor feed has become this escalating pissing contest of parents sharing stories or flexing their kids’ accomplishments of how many acceptances and how much scholarship dollars the local high school graduates are.  It has literally escalated every year, and for every person who loves to proclaim their kid got into every single Ivy League school and has amassed over $1M in scholarship offers, there’s two other kids who have been accepted into 20+ schools and has totaled over $2M in scholarship offers.  And the ships sail endlessly as people resort to internet passivity to vent before someone inevitably says can’t we all just get along???

Obviously, this behavior is not exclusive to Atlanta, and throughout the years, we’ve seen all sorts of tryhards who have turned educational achievements into sport itself, and all across the country there are people who are always trying to out-do and one-up everyone else with college acceptances, scholarship values, how many degrees, youngest to do something, oldest to accomplish X, etc, etc.

But shoutout to this 12-year out in California who managed to notch his fifth associates degree from Fullerton College, which sounds and is kind of impressive in its own right, seeing as how he’s only 12.  But then the low hanging fruit of jokes channels my inevitable becoming a high-expectations Asian dad, and wondering why his Asian parents seem to be okay with him taking a victory lap on the internet when all he’s accomplished were a handful of associates degrees.

Not even bachelor’s degrees!  WTF?

Of course, regardless of the snarky shade, he’s still set up perfectly to transition into actual college eventually, and I’m imagining that a large part of this game is to be able to transfer the evident butt ton of credits that he’s amassed from community college into an actual bachelor’s program, and he’ll still inevitably graduate from a real college well before he’s 18.

But the thing is that his motivation for embarking on such a tryhard path really wasn’t so much the fact that he wanted to learn faster and reach adulthood in a better place than most, as much as he heard that some 13-year old had done it, and he wanted to match or exceed them.  So it’s like, did he really, learn anything, as much as he checked off boxes and requirements for degrees, so he could beat someone else, or was he just basically trying to speed run through community college in order to have bragging rights?

Regardless, it’s all way too tryhard, way too obnoxious, and frankly a disservice to parenthood and raising a child in my opinion.  The boy probably has no friends and no social skills from being either taught at home by Asian parents or being surrounded by much older teens and young adults all through his college journey, and even if he is the wunderkind, when there’s no more school to be had, will probably end up as a sad sack adult with a whole lot of catching up with living amongst human beings, all because he and his family were caught up with trying to better someone else instead of bettering their kid.

When my kids are nine-years old, I’m hoping they’re finishing up the third grade, and have friends and peers their own age.  If they’re smarter than the curve, we’ll assess how to challenge them appropriately, but I’m pretty sure sending either my kids off to community college probably isn’t going to be on the table.  Meanwhile, by then, this tryhard kid will probably be 18 with a college degree, and completely incapable of getting a job, because he will be a social skill invalid, have no ability to interview or interact with other human beings, and end up working at his parents’ business whatever, stereotypical Asian one they’re in.

When you try hard, you die hard.