“Someone who puts over the top effort into something that doesn’t require it.”

“Someone who puts the max amount of effort into everything they do.”

“Someone that goes over the top when they don’t have to, always the teacher’s pet, and is always just like showing everyone up not even to get better grades but to be that kid.”

“Someone that gives up all other life opportunities for academic success.”

“Being over-obsessed with trying to get something.”

“Someone who tries too hard at something else would not try as hard at.”

“Am I allowed you say specific people?...You.”

Yep, that’s me. An absolute, no doubt about it, one hundred percent tryhard. I can’t even argue against it. I’ve gotten used to the comments of “stop studying”or “You know Noa, there’s such a thing as over studying,” and “Why do you care? It’s just school”... “It’s just one bad grade.” And I don’t get it. Why am I getting told to not care by my peers? My parents say I should care, my teachers say I should care, the College Board says I should care, so I am groomed to care and truly do care. Why does that make me “over-obsessed,” “the teacher’s pet,” or “that kid.” I understand that everyone has their own limitations and ideas of what “trying hard” means or what their limit of trying hard is. But I’ve never understood why being a tryhard is a bad thing. “Of course you got the grade, you went tryhard and met with your teacher like five times,” my friends say, “obviously you got in, you went full tryhard on the application.” As I hear these words, I’m sitting there thinking, “Well duh I did, wouldn’t you?” If someone really wants something, they want to excel, so why is it looked down upon when they try their hardest to get it? Why does me being a tryhard make my friends roll their eyes?

The first thing I think about is how the negative connotation of a tryhard is only applied in a school setting. On the other hand, when someone the same age works really hard and trains every day for a sport, they are given a medal. Of course, they made the team because they trained like there was no tomorrow, and so everyone high-fives them. No one is telling them to stop training every day after school or that they are working too hard to make the team. Because everyone praises the hard work ethic it takes to be the best athlete. And I agree, you should train very hard, you should practice and do everything in your power to make that dream team. In sports, tryhards win and tryhards are put on a pedestal. But not in school. Maybe it’s because school tests are so common, everyone is taking them. If you were to reward and congratulate everyone for every test, quiz, project, or presentation they did, you would be congratulating everyone you passed in the hall every period of every day. It’s not as common to make a varsity team as it is to take a math test. That actually makes sense to me, now that I think about it more closely. That because we all experience the schoolwork, it’s less of an individual accomplishment than it is to make a sports team. However, I don’t see how the different perspectives of hard work are still maintained. I’m not saying I need medals and high-fives, but why does it feel like a negative to me when I show how hard I tried in school compared to, for example, my own dance performance? The attitude for which reward is given to effort should be applied in the same way. Why are school and sports looked at so differently? I guess, stereotypically, ‘jocks’ are more popular than ‘nerds.’ Everyone has seen the teenage movies where the boy carrying his books gets pushed into the locker by the quarterback. But come on, we are living in a modern society. ‘Jocks’ can be ‘nerds’ and ‘nerds’ can be ‘jocks,’ right? It’s cool to be smart, especially in Scarsdale. It’s cool to get into the top schools and be in the top classes. But when you go the extra limit at school, that’s when it’s uncool. It’s the extra step that no one else seems to take that makes you stand out positively for yourself, and negatively for some of the people around you. 

I assume there is also a social aspect of it. If you stay in on a Saturday to study, you are missing the party, the hangout, the dinner that everyone is at. Nowadays, social media never lets you forget you aren’t there. From Instagram to Snapchat you will always know you aren’t at the hangout. It is plastered everywhere for you to see as soon as you unlock your phone. No matter how confident you are in yourself or how much FOMO (‘Fear Of Missing Out’) you think you don't have, sometimes it feels awful when everyone comes home to tell you what you missed while your head was in the books. I don’t think I am too far off to say that every teen has felt the infamous FOMO and who wants a science test to be the reason you feel it. But when you stay in on a fun weekend night or a cool brunch in the city, you feel proud about the effort you put in and you second guess yourself if it was worth it to miss that party and delicious french toast. At the end of the day, it boils down to what life you want for yourself. As I see it, if I put in the work now it will always pay off later. Even if I don’t get the grade, I did everything I could to get it and my efforts will pay off eventually. So maybe I missed that party, and maybe I feel FOMO a little, but it has to be worth something. It just has to be.

I think that there is fear behind being the person who cares. In every aspect of life, you never want to be seen to care more than others. It’s almost a secret that you care, and people try to hide it. In romantic relationships, friendships, jobs, or basically every relationship, this seems to be true. Because when you care, you become more vulnerable, you’re easier to break, and it’s easier for you to get disappointed. No one wants more disappointment because there is only so much disappointment one wants to experience in life. If you take it out of the school context, you can think about teenage romance. No one ever admits they like someone unless they are positive the other person likes them back. No one wants to be rejected and it all stems from the insecurity of caring too much and looking like a fool when you fail. The more you care about someone, the sadder you will feel if they don’t like you back, and the more the rejection will hurt. Now, if you translate it back into school, the more you care about acing the test, the more disappointed you will be if you don’t get the grade you were aiming to get. Feeling disappointment in yourself is probably the top five worst feelings. It’s awful when you care and you try so hard and you don’t succeed. There is no arguing against that horrible feeling when your test gets handed back upside down on your desk and you just know your teacher is trying to save you from the humiliation. But maybe it’s just one bad test, maybe you needed this to realize you weren’t studying correctly. And in romance, maybe you needed to tell them you liked them in order for you to realize they weren’t worth your time. So maybe being a tryhard is uncool out of a fear of caring too much and letting yourself down. And maybe it’s the “anti- tryhards” who are blockading themselves from future disappointment. 

I can also see being a tryhard as being humiliation tied with people seeing how much you cared. So it’s not just you being disappointed in yourself, but maybe it is also fearing people see that you care so much. In our generation, labels are everything, sadly. In Scarsdale, everyone knows your label. You’re labeled as smart, an athlete, who you’re dating, who didn’t get into this college, who did, the list goes on. The label “tryhard” means all eyes on you to see if your hard work paid off. But what happens when it doesn’t, when all the eyes are on you to see your failure after all the hard work you, obviously, put in. Will that label change? Will it now read “failure”? It’s terrifying, trying to not care how others see you. But when you are labeled a “tryhard,” everyone expects greatness. They expect the hard work that they know you put in to pay off. When it doesn’t, it’s scary. In your high school years, what other people think, unfortunately, controls certain parts of your life. But if being a “tryhard” is looked upon so negatively, no one in their right mind would want to be one. Because our high school society sees it as a bad thing, right?

In addition, the label of a “tryhard” also comes with the fact that you are actually really trying. Your smarts aren’t so over-the-top natural that you don’t need to study, you are just trying really hard, putting all your effort in and that is how you get the A grade. How embarrassing....Not being the person who can open up the textbook the night before and ace the test the next day. Not being the person who doesn’t need the teacher’s help to understand the lesson in class. It’s embarrassing to be the person who goes the extra length, and it’s so cool for it to come naturally. But the fact of the matter is, most people are not born with that level of natural intelligence. For most, it takes work to get where you want to go. It takes a lot of effort and maybe people just don’t want to show that for them it’s not as easy. Maybe it’s out of embarrassment that he studied for two hours and you studied for two days, and yet you still got the same grade. I think in a way being a tryhard comes from growing up and understanding that not everyone is the same. Obviously, this declaration has been made many times throughout one’s life, but I now genuinely believe that if people understood that everyone is different, they would also understand that everyone's best requires different amounts of work. My best in school requires studying a week before an exam, but her best might be one day before, and his best might be two days before. It’s hard to understand how our differences should not be looked down upon but it’s almost instilled in us as teenagers. And so the more effort you put in, the more embarrassing it is when someone who puts less effort does better than you, and a tryhard definitely puts in a lot of work.

I can also see the negativity towards a tryhard as stemming from old-fashioned jealousy. After all, we all get jealous of things we can’t have. So maybe it’s not the jealousy of not being as naturally super smart, but the jealousy of one person willing to go to those extra lengths to achieve a goal. The negativity is placed on the one that works hard because the others wish they could work that hard, too. It's hard to truly and really care about anything in one’s life. Caring requires your emotions to be somewhat reliant on a whole new aspect of something if you want to achieve greatness. There’s also a reason that “hard work” has the word “hard” in it. It’s because it is hard. Even when people work hard, it’s not fun, rather it’s tiring and it's sometimes very annoying. Consistently putting hard work in is draining and sometimes your goals are even unrealistic. Even after working hard, you constantly want to give yourself a break once you’ve succeeded along the way because you think you deserve it. And you probably do deserve it, but in this society, you take one step back and there are already five people who got in front of you. So much of this negative feeling is from having an aspect in yourself, and your outlook on your life, that others want. Not everyone is willing to care that much and work that much, and maybe instead of trying, they have just given up and declared that goal as stupid. Now that it’s stupid, it has become a negative to them. 

Maybe the answer to my question is that people are just simply lazy. Working hard takes, well, working hard. It takes time and effort and energy. But school is not everyone's top choice for putting in time, effort, and energy. There’s always sports, arts, time with friends, going to the movies, and watching TV shows. I mean the list goes on with most people's top preferences. Maybe people just don’t want to put in that time, effort, and energy. It’s annoying and frustrating, constantly caring. It’s so much easier to just do your best as it is and then feel ok when you do poorly, come home, and watch TV. Life would be so much easier if no one cared. Life is easier, in retrospect, when you’re lazy and don’t care. Especially when you’re young. Most people have the luxury of a nice home and great school and delicious food without having to work at anything. Kids have their parents for that, so there is always something to fall back on. So being lazy does not come at a high cost in high school. And people take advantage of it. No one who is lazy is going to be called a tryhard by their friends. 

“Do you want to be a tryhard?”

“No.”

“No.”

“I would rather be a tryhard than whatever the opposite is.”

“Yeah, if it helps me succeed.”

“Maybe, depends what it is.”

“Well I’m a very competitive person so yes but also at the same time I don’t care enough to do things so no.”- Alessia 

“I would say no, I guess, because I know that I can be successful without working my a** off and only focusing on doing things perfectly isn’t what works.”- Sam 

“Do you want to try hard?”

“Sometimes.”

“If it’s when doing the things I love, then yes.”

“Yes, I do want to try hard.”

“Maybe. I do want to try hard and perform to the best of my abilities in school.”

“Yeah I always want to try hard but it’s so hard to actually get myself to do so. Takes a lot of work.”

“Yes but only to an extent where I can still focus on other activities.”

After thinking through this question and interviewing my peers, I’ve come to realize that it is genuinely just the label of a “tryhard” that makes it so unappealing. When asked the question of “Are you a tryhard,” using the label, most of my peers said “no.” When asked the question “Do you want to try hard?,” all of the answers were towards some inclination of “yes.” It’s just the label that misconstrues what the meaning of being a tryhard is. Clearly, people see a dramatic difference between tryhards and just trying hard at something worthy in their eyes. Ultimately, all of the social aspects of high school, as well as truly caring enough to work hard can lead to some jealousy from others unwilling to put the work in is really the backstory behind the eye roll.