As the days trickle down to graduation, students of all kinds prepare for judgment day: end-of-year exams and papers. While dreading finals is commonplace, there’s a reason why Trinity’s academic rigor is one of its features. U.S. News ranks Trinity No. 40 for best liberal arts colleges in the country, in part thanks to students’ efforts. While statistics like these don’t matter for students’ daily lives, they’re a materialization of their efforts.
Trinity students’ focus on being “academic weapons” is more than just dedication to schoolwork; it’s a lifestyle. As we think of students’ lifestyles on the eve of commencement, we should reconsider this hyperfocus on academic life. While tryharding has its perks and may even be a source of pride, it can and will break you down.
Dictionary.com defies “tryhard” in three ways. First, “an underskilled or untalented participant attempting to compensate with sheer effort to succeed.” Second, “a person who participates in a game or other activity with too much enthusiasm, emotion, effort, or commitment.” Lastly, “someone creating a false image to appear more attractive or appealing; a phony; a poser.” However, I think all three of these miss the mark academically. While tryharding carries a certain braggadocio, in a university setting it reflects students’ sheer effort to their studies rather than a negative quality.
If we put in the work, we reap the benefits. That’s the promise that tryharding presents to students’ academic careers. With a spot on the Dean’s List, academic awards and research opportunities up for grabs, there’s an incentive to be a tryhard. I lived by tryharding for years, which, embarrassingly, speaks more about my general lifestyle habits than anything. However, this semester marked a change: I missed readings and neglected the many stacks of books littering my dorm. I saw my limit, and it’s something that every student has to confront. That said, this shift in attention to work isn’t restricted to personal diatribes; it reflects broader exhaustion.
My experiences are hardly novel. Go around campus and listen to Trinity’s student population, and you’ll hear the same stories — students sharing class-specific complaints is the norm. We learn a lot from listening, and individual workloads broadly dictate students’ lives. There’s a symbolic exchanging of grievances, almost academic brinkmanship about who has it worse. Perhaps it’s antithetical to the term, but tryharding should be approached with humility and genuineness. It ideally reflects more than ambition; instead, it reveals a commitment to growth. In a world where effort is often seen as cringeworthy, being authentic in our daily work demonstrates who we are as people.
Beyond the pressure of finals season, it’s always a stressful time for somebody. Trinity’s list of resources dedicated to students’ well-being and academic success indicates how difficult it is to keep up. Tryharding locks students into a constant cycle of stress, where every project becomes the educational equivalent of a life-or-death situation. Tryharding can make us mechanical, but deep down, we’re still human. Unlike machines, humans have their limits.
With all this attention to work, there needs to be a balance. Given that I’m the least qualified to argue for school-life balance, however, there’s a whole life to be lived beyond the classroom and outside the library. If these walls could talk, Halsell Center would probably want me to leave and never return. Graduating seniors will enter a workforce where 76% of employees experience burnout. It feels like students who try to do everything are giving their best Giles Corey impression, but yearning for “more books” instead of “more weight.”
Too often, burnout is characterized as “gifted kid syndrome” — a deeply unhelpful label. “Gifted kid burnout” feels like a self-rationalization away from the idea that, eventually, academic life takes effort. Burnout is a real and serious issue, but the problem with the idea of “gifted” kids is that it downplays knowledge as something acquired effortlessly. Instead, tryharding through perfectionism seems to be the appropriate phrase to describe how students approach individual projects, spending endless hours on minor details.
We live in a time where people race to boast about themselves. Whether it’s Instagram or LinkedIn, the race goes on from our personal lives as students to our professional lives. For graduates, the world of academic tryharding will shift from worrying over 20-page essays weeks in advance to a cynical, corporate tryharding. Despite how they may seem, grades are not eternal — especially for graduates. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is how we perceive our effort — tryharding or not.
