Why We Shouldn’t Try Too Hard

Why We Shouldn’t Try Too Hard
Dahyun Kim

I remember talking to a teacher about how I “wanted to live a life as easily as possible.” In return, he chuckled and asked me if I wanted to become a pothead.

That response was a complete distortion of the hidden meaning behind my own well intended statement. The hidden meaning inside of my statement was that I wanted to live an easy life without having to get bothered and without having to be control-freaky and picky about every single little thing. Which, if you have to look at it that way, is a mindset that might lead to the unlikely job of a pothead. But that isn’t the point.
You see, sometimes I hear from my fellow students that an upperclassman managed to get 2400 on the SAT, has a GPA of 4.0, and managed to pull of the feat of getting 5s on over ten APs. Clap. Clap. Clap. I’m not denying that this is awesome. It’s horribly awesome. I can’t imagine bringing myself to do anything like that. It just shows how much people are desperate to achieve in the short period of three years that is spent in high school. It’s incredible really, seeing how we do anything to get anything that will supposedly send us to prestigious colleges, universities, whatever. The lives that we have been living so far seem to be revolving around the idea of “success,” or what we think as of success. It’s good actually. It means that we’re really realistic. It also means that we’re really, well, trying.

Trying is a word that constantly lingers around in my mind, and it is gnawing away at my brain now that I know that I will be a senior very, very, very soon. Hello 노인정. I’m not glad to see you so quickly. So, the obvious thing for me to do, as a senior, is to try to get better grades, try to ace the remaining APs that I will take (which is more of a must-do thing), try to be a better person so that the my fellow students will write exquisite comments about my flawless character, try to do extracurricular activities that will show that I am a unique person, try to write the perfect essay so that the likeliness of me being picked by any university will increase by 3% at the most, etcetera, etcetera. Well, I’m tired already. That long list of trys is making my past two years at Daewon look pathetic, and I’m not going to deny that.

At the end of my junior year, I’ve figured out a few things about trying. Trying is good. Overdoing things isn’t. I know that most of you guys want to be perfect. Most of you believe that you will become important people who do stuff. Maybe you will. Maybe going to some IVY school or any other conspicuous school in either the U.S.A or the U.K will increase your chances of living your ideal life. In most cases, that is true. But please remember that nobody is perfect. Nobody is perfect, but everybody is unique. Trying to do something because others are doing the same thing isn’t really going to help you at all. Believe me, I’ve tried. And failed miserably. Failing after trying does wondrous things to your self confidence; it makes it nearly
nonexistent.

Just. Just don’t overdo it. But don’t under-do it either. You’ll be suspected of wanting to become a pothead too.