god, it's brutal out here

By Rachel Tran

Ah, the god-forsaken year of 2020. An entire academic year down the drain, right?

School became all about busy work. Learning turned out to be the toughest chore. Sleeping would become the most difficult task. Rest-time became plagued by notifications from Google Classroom reminding you about the 10 missing assignments you have to finish.

Your grades (and a majority of the high school student population’s) probably dropped a couple percent's on average.

Yet, for senior Natalie Tran, a student athlete and one of the top ranked students on campus, she continuously pushes to be a better version of herself.

Her strong mentality is as present as ever over the period of distance learning, even with the 0.17 drop in the national average GPA. Tran spent most of her waking hours staring at a computer screen, simultaneously damaging her 20/20 vision, to maintain her cumulative 4.0 GPA.

Natalie: “I did really well during online school. I think it was because it was so different virtually and I didn’t want to fail.”

Natalie: “I'm basically more hard on myself compared to others.”

And the grades are here to prove it. Tran’s best grades were encapsulated in her junior year at Yerba Buena, where the majority of the letters on each report card were an A or higher.

Continuously checking and keeping themselves on track was something that a lot of students struggled with due to the self-study nature of education that the pandemic-induced year brought upon them.

Natalie: “Even though it impacted my mental health, I still pushed through.”

In addition to this newly introduced struggle of self-responsibility, the academically competitive (and toxic) culture of the Bay Area has pushed numerous students onto the verge of giving up on simply maintaining grades, let alone even trying to partake in extracurricular activities.

Although she doesn’t let her surroundings impact her, her own perfectionist mindset pushes her to continuously outperform herself.

Natalie: “Basically, people consider me to be competitive but I don't let it bother me because I'm more competitive with myself than others. Like I know I can always do better so I always push myself to be this idealistic and unattainable version of myself.”

Every plant has a seed, and for Natalie, the root of her perfectionism and continual effort to work hard stems from not only pressure to outdo herself, but the push she receives from her family, especially her parents.

Natalie: “Like those comments and little remarks of saying ‘oh you can do so much more, you have so much potential’ makes me believe that I do and when I don’t reach that full potential, I always feel like…I can do more. I feel like right now, I can become even better.”

Like many students on campus, Natalie has firsthand experiences of the pressure that comes with being the family’s “only hope,” and the dictation of the life that goes along with being the golden child is hard to bear.

Natalie: “I'm the only child so they (my parents) expect a lot from me. Even though I’m the only child, I come from a big household, and within that household, my mom is the breadwinner. And she’s the only one who’s graduated from an actual college. So I feel like that pressure is put onto me because they expect me to be like her. Basically, she’s the head of the household and provides for us financially. And I feel like I have to do the same thing because I’m the oldest. She’s the oldest in her family. I feel like I have to do that because I’m expected to follow in her footsteps.”

With soaring expectations of becoming her mother’s successor, Natalie must always take initiative in what she believes would benefit the rest of her family. Yet, as she struggles with figuring out what she wants to do for herself and her future, her decisions are further swayed by constant tension from her surroundings.

Natalie: “Yeah, they put this pressure on me, but they say, ‘that’s up to you,’ and, ‘it’s whatever makes you happy,’ and I feel like that even puts more pressure on me because I don’t know what makes me happy. I think the only thing that makes me happy is seeing them happy.”

As Natalie continues her journey to find out what her future has in store, a twist forces her to take a pause. After her mother’s diagnosis of clear-cell carcinoma, Tran felt as though her entire mindset took a nosedive. The ideal to please her parents intensified tenfold, and on came more pressure than ever.

Natalie: “My biggest motivation is my parents, but mostly my mom. They both expect big things from me since I'm an only child. So that pressure affects me, and also it changes my mentality to like, ‘Oh I have to do this. If I don't do this then who else will?’”

Now, as her senior year begins to come to a close, the winter sports season coming to an end, and the stresses of college applications being a memory from the past, Natalie is still working her hardest to navigate the future she has ahead.

Natalie has kept a positive mindset and outlook on her future. Her mom has begun to recover, and although her extracurricular activities are still excessive, Natalie is working on improving her perspective.

As the final chapter of her high school career comes to a close, Natalie hopes to discover who she really is when she advances to college without the burden of outdoing herself for others on the line.

Natalie: “I look forward to discovering more about myself. I feel that I’ve been sheltered or in this sort of small circle that didn’t really allow me to experience what exactly I want to do or be. In other words, I really look forward to this sort of freedom and independence after graduation. Hopefully being able to find out what I want for myself without considering too much of other peoples feelings or opinions.”

So, as Natalie takes a step forward towards her unforeseen yet exciting future, she continues to carry a piece of advice given to her by her family, friends, and her biggest supporters.

Natalie: “You’re not obligated to please anyone. Or like it’s not your responsibility to make sure that others are happy. I feel that I tend to put others before myself but I pretend that I don’t. I try to be lowkey about it but it never really works out 'cause you know? Anyways, I’ve been told many times that I’m too considerate of other people's feelings and I should put myself first for a change.”

You might recognize her as just another student on campus; another individual in a school that you might not even know how to navigate. Whatever it is, everyone has a story. This is Natalie’s.

Although this story has an ending, this is only the end of Natalie’s chapter. Her story will continue to grow and branch as she experiences the world in a new light once the diplomas are handed and the caps are thrown.

With high hopes for the future, she wishes that those who come across her story can resonate with her sentiment and take a word of advice with them for their future endeavors.

Natalie: “You should always try your best in accomplishing these goals BUT you should also know your limit. Don’t try so hard to reach this goal, if that goal is impacting you in a negative way. Especially your mental health. Mental health is important and I feel that people don’t really talk about this subject or they just think lightly of it. It’s a huge accomplishment if you do reach your goals but it’s also admirable when knowing when to push pause and put yourself first. I know it’s a little hypocritical but this is the kind of advice that I wish I’d have gotten before pursuing these goals of mine.”

For the Warrior Times, this is Rachel Tran.