Tag: lowered expectations

The hardest part of every day

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Is trying to suppress how difficult life is in conversation, because if I were to be too honest about it, I would come off as curmudgeon and probably seen as overly cynical when I’m just being honest, and then such would become my reputation if it already isn’t at this point, and because perception is reality, everyone around me would tread even lighter than they already do to the point where I would become alienated more than I already feel like I am.

Because if I were to explain that I wake up every single day of the week at 6:40 in order to be ahead of the kids as far as breakfast and preparation for the day goes and the only time I ever get a breather is when my mother-in-law visits or I’m physically out of pocket, that might sound kind of rough, to almost never get a breather or opportunity to sleep in, ever.

I love my kids, but they’re at an age where everything is a fight, everything is a power struggle, they’re going to bed later than they’ve ever gone before, and by the time they’re in bed, I’m usually already hangry and frustrated at the fact that I will now have maybe two, three hours if I’m willing to stay up on the later end, to actually not be a dad, which is a paltry amount of time to accomplish really anything, as if I had any hobbies left at this juncture of my life.

But first I have to reset the house for the next day of kid carnage, and the vast majority of the time it’s just me that’s doing any of it, adding to my daily frustration level.  I do the dishes, pack the kids’ lunches, pack my own lunch, generally tidy up what needs to be tidied up, and by the time I’m done with everything, I’ll maybe have an hour before I should really be thinking about going to bed in order for this song and dance to repeat the next day.

Yeah, my life really isn’t something that I imagine anyone would envy, other than the love I have and get from my beautiful kids, and along with the aforementioned struggles above, is the fact that I feel like I’m trapped inside a bubble of being incapable of expressing myself, other than a brog nobody reads which is the closest thing to an outlet I have it feels like a lot of the time.  I don’t feel capable of being able to unload with my family or friends and I definitely wouldn’t entertain the thought of opening up to colleagues.

But it’s fucked up that I feel it’s better to be disingenuous rather than entirely honest, because honesty would hit like a sledgehammer, and I just don’t think people are tough enough to be able to handle it.  I already feel like an island most of my life, which is absolutely frightening because the last person I want to be like is my island of a dad, but I just don’t think there’s anybody who could take the truth without it blowing up in some way shape or form.

Someone put Miguel Vargas on (career) suicide watch

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

No matter how much the Braves stink it up sometimes, and even if they miss the playoffs due to Bryce Elder, their feast or famine inept offense, and their complete lack of willingness to improve at the trade deadline or by signing Trevor Bauer, fewer things will be sadder than this image of now-White Sox infielder, Miguel Vargas, staring off into the abyss after the White Sox had lost their 20th consecutive baseball game.

A little over a week ago, Vargas was suiting up for the first in the NL West Dodgers, probably living his best life.  As being part of a Major League roster, his paychecks were probably getting nice and thick, and the team is so loaded with talent, that he was mostly a backup player anyway, living the American dream of sitting on a bench for the vast majority of every game, and at the most, getting a pinch-hit or pinch-run opportunity, or a Sunday start.  Life in LaLa-Land was beautiful and sunny, and even if his minor league performance hadn’t yet caught up to the bigs, he had made it.

But then Vargas was traded to the Chicago White Sox; not just the worst team in the AL Central, they’re the worst team in all of baseball, and they were riding a lengthy losing streak, that had no light at the end of the tunnel of stopping.  Aside from the trade that brough him to Chicago, anyone who had any inkling of a chance at stopping the bleeding were also getting shipped out, and the White Sox were undoubtedly raising the white flag on the season, and the organization’s only objective was to be able to field a team for the remainder of the games of the season, all while attempting to restore their farm system with assets and prospects from other teams via trade.

Originally, my knee-jerk reaction was that Vargas should suck it up and take solace in the fact that he’s still a major league player on a big league roster.  He’s still getting paid major league money to play a kids game, and being moved to a team like the White Sox, should alleviate pretty much all pressure there could be to succeed, because the team has no pressure to actually win games; and it’s in these conditions where a guy like Miguel Vargas could flourish and raise his stock, and either get paid, or possibly get traded again, after the season, and escape from the Southside.

However, apparently Miguel Vargas is at a precariously early stage of his career that he kind of has a reason to be depressed and mopey over his situation.  Being a pre-arbitration player, he’s making league minimum, which is still a ridiculous $775K to play baseball, it’s low enough to where he becomes a negligible risk of getting cut like a rounding error.  And if his performance doesn’t show some improvement soon, the two prospects sent to Chicago with him also play the same positions he do, and they could very well leapfrog over him in the organizational hierarchy.

Above all else, he goes from sunny beautiful Los Angeles to the south side of Chicago.  I don’t even know what their park is called nowadays, but I can’t imagine it’s improved at all from when it was The Cell™ AKA the worst ballpark in all of MLB in my own experiences.  Sure, I’d wager that he’s not actually living on the south end of the city, but he still has to commute there for all his home games, and the Southside really is as shitty as it’s made to look in Shameless. 

I’d be on the precipice of a breakdown if I were Miguel Vargas too, but at least there’s one possible silver lining to everything he’s going through – if the Dodgers actually do manage to not fuck up in the playoffs and miraculously win the World Series, then he is due a World Series ring too, because baseball is funny like that and even the slimmest of contributors get a share in the credit of a championship.

Either way, when I had the idea to write about Miguel Vargas, I originally thought along the lines of suck it up, buttercup, but then diving deeper into his financials and his performance statistics, I began to realize that he really did have a reason to be this sad, and that in itself is really sad, because professional athletes shouldn’t ever be sad, unless they’re losing critical championship-implication games, not some random August regular season scrap against another pitiful franchise like the A’s.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: I’m surprised she’s alive to TRYHARD

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Honestly it’s hard to stay motivated to keep writing about all these #TRYHARDs after covering someone who was accepted into 231 schools before picking a random low-tier school, but the show must go on until the clock hits zero: 16-year old Louisiana girl accepted into 60 colleges, presumably graduating early in order to start college

By now, after writing about 20 of these insufferable #TRYHARDs, I’m kind of having some regret for taking this pointless exercise on, but at the same time, it’s something that keeps me writing even when I don’t want to write about it, and for someone who takes pride in sticking with it, there are worse things to complain about, like my life in general but anyway.

It’s obvious that so many people embark on the path of being a #TRYHARD because it brings them attention and they really like attention, but this particular one seems to have gotten bit by the attention bug at an early age, based on this specific quote from the article:

Poullard has also gone viral as a child, when she met former president Barack Obama.

“Still to this day I don’t realize how hard it is to meet the president,” Poullard said. “My daddy told me before we walked in that White House. He’s like ‘When you see the president run up to him and I bet you’ll go viral’. It’s been like 11 years. I just think that’s so crazy.”

It’s almost like daddy wanted his daughter to get gunned down or something, instructing his child to fucking run at the President of the United States.  But clearly the country under Obama probably made it just a hair safer for a five-year old black kid to run at the POTUS, and I didn’t care enough to dig deeper on the claim that she was viral as a kid and being noticed by the internet now for being a #TRYHARD, but it’s evident that the things this 16-year old has done in her life has probably mostly been done in the name of getting attention.

But another telling quote that I found amusing were her so called words of wisdom to those who would also wish to embark on the attention-seeking path of #TRYHARDing:

Just because you don’t have a high A-C-T score or your grades might not be that good, you can still apply to that school if you want to,” Poullard said. “I guarantee you when you have a long list of community services that you’ve done, that’s going to say a lot about you as a person.”

So the takeaway I get from this is that despite being a mediocre student, as long as you don’t set your goals too high, you can still apply to a boatload of schools and get accepted into a lot of them, and as long as you don’t give specifics to the schools you’re applying to, you can still boast that you got into 60 of them and sound like a genius scholar.

I will say though, it must not have been entirely too mediocre, because the reveal at the end is that she’s staying local, and will be going to LSU.  As far as I’m concerned, LSU is one of the better known schools that has collected a #TRYHARD, but I also know them primarily for athletics and know nothing about them academically.  I do know though, that LSU is a school that does party real hard, and has some rough partying culture, and if I’m a parent, I’m definitely sweating sending my 16-year old daughter away to LSU.

For a kid that has been speedrunning life to get to college at the age of 16, there are some harsh, hard realities that are going to come into play once you’re away from home at college, and I hope they’ve learned enough street smarts and have enough maturity to survive college, and rush to become a miserable adult sooner rather than later.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: All hail the queen

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t think anyone’s beating this: Hinesville, Georgia high school senior accepted into approximately 231 schools, amassing approximately $14,790,695 in cumulative scholarship offers

Welp, I think we’ve found our alpha #TRYHARD for the 2024 season, at least for the category of kids who apply to every single college under the fucking sun, because I can’t imagine that there’s anyone out there that’s going to surpass 231 acceptances at this stage of the season where most selections have to be made, like last week.

What’s amusing to me from this article is the approximation as far as the number of acceptances and the cumulative scholarship dollars are concerned.  Usually I feel like lots of these #TRYHARD stories just kind of round to a nice round number, usually 50+ unless it’s really high, to which approximation comes into play, and I suppose when you’ve got 231 fucking college acceptances, you really want to shout that from the rooftops.

I mean earlier in the year we had like 60+ and 80+, but this girl right here is the true queen, who clearly has been applying to colleges since 2022, because I remember how long a single college application takes, but to repeat the entire exercise over 231 times because I don’t believe that it’s possible for her to have batted a perfect 1.000 here, she clearly has been copy and pasting her credentials, or she’s getting some sort of advantageous means to apply to all these schools on a fast track. 

Either way, it does seem kind of fucked up, and really makes me wonder what the quality of life this girl has been living over the last few years, or wondering where she’s had time to apply to all these schools on top of the supposed extracurriculars, volunteer work and workload commitments she must’ve had.

Imagine if she had to pay for all these applications because I don’t imagine she had to pay a cent if she’s applying to over 231 schools.  Google says the average is around $75-90 which is bullshit because I remember it being way higher when I was applying to schools, but even still, multiplying that to just 231 is still $17,325 on the low end, not including the schools applied to that she didn’t get into, let’s round up, and since all these #TRYHARDs love to spout numbers, let’s estimate that she should’ve been billed about $20,000 just to apply to all these schools but more than likely didn’t have to pay.

But in true #TRYHARD fashion, as mind-blowing as 231 acceptances is, the lack of clarity on any notable acceptances, the rush to boast numbers and aggregate scholarship dollars, still indicates that the quality of the #TRYHARDING is on the low-end, especially considering her end result is selecting High Point University, in North Carolina.

I know where High Point is, since it’s in that space between Charlotte and Greensboro, and I know if it as a place that signifies that the boring-ass stretch of nothing in between the two is coming to an end when going northbound.  I also work a lot with a studio out there that did photography for my old company, and knew some nice folks there, but still by and large, High Point is a place where most people don’t really know where it is and probably have to Google it in order to find out where it is, and the fact that out of 231 schools, High Point University is the one that wins out means that the pool probably wasn’t populated by any heavy-hitters.

I mean, a free ride is a free ride, but High Point’s average tuition is allegedly $42K a year for an out-of-state student, and if she’s getting a free ride, we’re looking at like $170K give or take.  That being said, considering she amassed just under $15M in scholarships, I can’t help but be curious to know what kind of underwhelming offers there were from the 230 other schools that don’t have the dubious distinction of being selected by the 2024 queen of #TRYHARDs.

Whatever though, good on this #TRYHARD for getting a free ride.  I’m sure her parents are proud and relieved to know they won’t have to pay for schooling, and that they’ve got a child that will finagle an expensive piece of paper for free, and has demonstrated the ability to do a repetitive, monotonous task over and over again, like applying to mediocre colleges.  Can’t imagine the much more sky being the limit for these underwhelming expectations, but then again I also never finished college either, so I guess I should take my own advice and bow down to the queen (of #TRYHARDs).

#TRYHARDSZN2024: Just 17??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sós: Westlake High senior accepted into 17 colleges, amassing over $1M in combined scholarship offers

I’m convinced the only thing students are taught at Westlake High is how to apply to colleges, and once they become proficient at it, it’s all they do every day at school.  Because this is the third time this #TRYHARDSZN that I’m dipping into a story about students at Westlake High who have been accepted into a large number of colleges; all of which have made sure to mention the aggregate dollar amount of scholarships they’ve been offered, which is typically the tell-tale sign that most of the schools they were accepted to aren’t really that prestigious.

But to review, we’ve had students that cleared 63 and 50 acceptances, and then one who cleared 50+, so a student “only” being accepted into 17 schools seems kind of booty in comparison, especially seeing as how in their insufferably terrible senior wall where all students humblebrag or be ashamed of how many or how little schools they’ve been accepted into, there were more than just a few that probably had 17+ acceptances posted on the wall.

However, doing the math, and clearing $1M in combined scholarships out of just 17 acceptances blows the fuck out of water compared to the other TRYHARDs of the SZN who needed 50+ schools to clear the $1M mark.  Which means that she’s gotten some substantially heavier ride offers from fewer schools than her peers at CollegeApp High.

One thing that is a little different about this #TRYHARD’s story is that she actually has a pick named, and isn’t just being mum about where she’s going to go because they’re still phishing out a free ride from somewhere; and it’s of all the schools in the country, she’s picking Notre Dame.

I respect the ambition and the absolute get-the-fuck-out-of-the-hood mentality she’s taking, but I have to imagine it’s going to be a tremendous amount of culture shock going up to South Bend.  Especially from southwest Atlanta, going to lily-white Indiana where the winters are going to be brutal and the number of black people is going to feel like she’s going to Norway.

But considering her successes with #TRYHARDing, she’ll probably be alright in the end.  Good on this one for actually stating intent to go somewhere remotely prestigious, and not just doing it for humblebragging attention.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: No better way to celebrate Ivy Day success with McD’s

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

McSauce: Connecticut teenager accepted into three Ivy League schools, among “other prestigious colleges”

Honestly, the most astounding thing about this story is that this is the first #TRYHARD that I’ve come across that isn’t just white, but is also a white female.  This isn’t meant to be a sexist remark, but for whatever reason, there doesn’t seem to be many stories come TRYHARDSZN that involve white people in general, much less white females.

I guess considering the demographics of the majority of TRYHARDs, we’re hitting a saturation point where suddenly white people are becoming the minority, especially when it comes to acceptances into Ivy League schools.

It’s no more prevalent than when the article tries to extol all the qualifications of why the TRYHARD deserves to get into an egregious amount of schools, there’s practically nothing.  Vague on extracurriculars, no dropping names of activities she’s done, no SAT scores, no GPA listed, and the only tangible thing mentioned are the 11 AP classes she took, which honestly is nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to any high schooler wanting to go to college these days.

When it comes the deluge of college applications Ivy League schools receive every applicationSZN, they’re probably all minorities; mostly Asians, no less.  I bet they have people combing through all the applications and looking for obvious Hispanic and black applicants to meet their quotas, and at some point they realize just how few white applicants they’re getting, and start filtering for them in a panic, so they can be true to their claim for having diverse student bodies and populations.

Regardless, I like how this TRYHARD was waiting to get food at McDonald’s when she found out she had been accepted into Harvard, Yale and Columbia.  In various places in America are some really salty Asian parents whose kids with 1500+ SATs, 4.5 GPAs and Honda Odysseys full of extracurriculars and electives whose kids won’t be getting into Harvard or Yale.

I wonder if she proceeded to get her more than likely 10 pc. McBoots and fries after finding out she was accepted into these schools, or if the excitement of acceptance made her forget about her appetite?  If the former, her digestive system probably thanks her, but if not, she and her sister were undoubtedly celebrating her good news with a healthy game of Battle Shits; I hear it’s a popular game amongst white girls at Ivy League schools.

#TRYHARDSZN2024: Tryharding out of boredom

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: St. Louis #TRYHARD accepted into 40 different schools

I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is probably one of the weaker #TRYHARDs of the season, since of all this one’s 40 acceptances, there are no notables named, and from the cherry-picked humblebrag screen shots of her holding acceptances, none of the schools that I can see are particularly anything to ring home about.

Plus, no academic merits were listed anywhere in the article, which means that this kid didn’t have a brag-worthy SAT score, ACT score, GPA, AP class regimen or already begun amassing college credits.  But hey, she can wrestle and is a part of the step team!

Naturally the weakness of a #TRYHARD usually resorts to the cumulative amount of scholarship dollars they’ve been offered, and in this case, this #TRYHARD has amassed over $1M in offers but lest we forget that it doesn’t work that way and $1M does not go to the school of choice.

What really sets me off about this particular #TRYHARD is the seemingly flippant attitude demonstrated when it came to the college application process, to which anyone who’s ever done one knows, is a colossal pain in the ass where you might excited and optimistic when you start, but by the time you’re getting to the end, you’re over it and glad to just be done with it.  And to repeat that process more than 3-4 times, to the magnitude of 40+?  Yeah fuck that.

But for this #TRYHARD, applying to colleges is something that she seemingly did, out of boredom:

I would just be sitting in my room applying, just as I am with scholarships right now. When I’m bored, I’m just applying. When I’m not bored, I’m just applying,” the 18-year-old said.

For starters, I’m guessing there’s some amended process available to them, otherwise I don’t think they’re filling out 40+ college applications.  Either that, or they’re copy/pasting their personal essays, if they’re required to write one, and I’m sure colleges are as thrilled to be reading someone’s copy/paste as much as the kids are thrilled to have to write them in the first place.

But it’s the attitude of someone applying out of boredom that kind of irks me; now I didn’t finish college in the traditional sense, but I still know that there’s a lot of power in the degree, and I know the value of a strong education.  It make me feel annoyed that there are people who apply for schools out of boredom, and I’ve touched on this before, because if and when they are accepted, they’re effectively blocking someone else from getting the spot, and forcing people to be put on waitlists until #TRYHARDSZN winds down, people make their choices, and the scraps of slots are re-opened up to people who have had to wait.

Fortunately in the case of this #TRYHARD, it doesn’t seem like a lot of necessarily prestigious schools are being clogged up by her.  Based on her aspirations and what I can tell are some of her acceptances, there was a fairly mid-tier ceiling to all of her boredom applications.

Considering her top pick is Alabama State, I’m guessing they’re one of the schools that probably offered a full-ride, and there’s nothing wrong with phishing for that because school is an expensive endeavor, but I’m also allowed to opine that as #TRYHARD as applying to 40+ schools is, settling on a school like Alabama State might be reaching for some low-hanging fruit.