Try Harder!
**Seen at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
While there was pressure for me to do as well as I could in high school in the hopes of getting into college, I did not have the pressure that comes with being in the top percentile of my class, or having to go to a particular school, or type of school. I was an average student, I applied to two colleges, and got into one but not the other. I wasn’t devastated about the choice, and it was five years I will never forget. Whether that approach was what was best for me is debatable, but I will say- not having the anxiety the kids in Debbie Lum’s wonderful “Try Harder!” have was a benefit for me.
“Try Harder!” follows several students at Lowell High School in San Francisco. Though a public school, it has one of the strongest concentrations of Asian-American students in the country, and the students are highly competitive in terms of grades and AP classes and getting into only the best schools. Many of them are in their senior year, and we follow them in classes, in prepping their admission packets, and getting interviews and acceptance letters, as well as rejection letters. For these students, even a 1500 on the SAT is not good enough, and a 3.9 GPA means less of a chance to get into nearby Stanford, which has the tightest admission restrictions in the country. We hear about these students sending off 10-20 admission applications to some of the most prestigious colleges in the world; what if they get rejected from all of them?
The anxiety is one of the most palpable emotions we get out of “Try Harder!” as it moves briskly through its 85-minute run time. The uncertainty these kids feel about their future, the questioning of the college’s motivations if they get accepted. What to do if they’re unable to get into the college of their dreams. This isn’t a film filled with suspense, mind you, but I think I felt that stress about life after high school more watching “Try Harder!” than I did at any point in my own junior and senior year. But the joy and support these kids feel is palpable, as well, whether they got into the school they wanted or if they have to settle for something else. Mostly, “Try Harder!” shows us a year in the life of these students, and reminds us that high school, regardless of where we found ourselves academically, was four years of stressing about the future, and it hasn’t gotten any easier from the time we left high school ourselves.
