“Your child's anxiety is your anxiety,” said Donna Schmidt, the parent of a former Lowell High School student in San Francisco who appears in the documentary film Try Harder, premiering tonight on PBS as part of Independent Lens. The school is famous for its academic competitive nature and Ivy League college acceptance rate, but it all comes at a cost, as the film reveals. “As a parent, you take on their stress because there's no other way to do it. One of the things I find fascinating is on Friday, when [Rachel, Donna’s daughther] gets home, she would start studying. That was just the weirdest thing. So typically you're there with her, so that's your Friday too. Now, this is what your Friday looks like. It's a very interesting experience.”
(Courtesy of Lou Nakasako)
Filmmaker Debbie Lum’s original intention was only to focus on the students, a fact she revealed during a TCA press conference to promote the film. “We kind of imagined the parents would be sort of like the parents in Charlie Brown, in the Peanuts, where they would just be in the background, like ‘wah, wah, wah,’” the director and producer explained. “But, of course, we met Donna. We were like, ‘Oh, my gosh. How can we not put Donna in the film?’” While Debbie’s scope expanded to include a parent’s perspective, she did note that the biggest influence on a student's success at Lowell was peer pressure more than parental pressure. “The kids that I met ended up doing the best in their college results were the kids that were doing it regardless of what their parents had to say in the matter. If anything, they were doing that based on their own sense of their identity, which is largely coming from their peers around them.”
The peer pressure aspect of success at Lowell was echoed by former physics teacher Richard Shapiro. “Something that's built into the Lowell zeitgeist is to perhaps work a little too hard but to achieve at a maximum level,” Richard shared. “A physics Nobel Prize winner graduated from Lowell in 1980, came back to visit about 20 years ago, and spent a day in my classes and gave a talk in the auditorium. What he said, the most important takeaway he had from Lowell is that when he got there, he found out that it was actually, and these were his words, ‘cool to study hard and to try to do as good as you can."’ He said that was a new concept for him. He said it felt very good, and by doing that he was normal. So I think that has been integrated into the school culture. I think Debbie's right in focusing on the importance and power of peer culture in this regard.”
Most teenagers would jump at the chance to be featured in a film, but Debbie actually met some resistance when approaching students at Lowell. “We often would get, ‘Hold on, I have something more important to do than to speak to a documentary filmmaker,” Debbie Lum revealed. Richard Shapiro ended up being her easy entry into the student's world. “We felt very privileged to be able to go through Lowell High School where all around us the kids were so stressed out, working so hard, but we kind of got to just experience the thrill of being surrounded by them.”
“It's all such a blur, honestly, just a blend of sleep deprivation and it being so long ago,” recalled former Lowell student Ian Wang, who was still at the school when the documentary was filmed. “If I could go back and tell myself something, I would tell myself not to be so anxious, everything happens for a reason, and it's all good. Everyone's happy in their next step at some point.” The silver lining for Ian was that college came much easier to the Lowell alumni as a result of having such a stressful high school experience. “At Lowell, we had seven classes a day and as many as four tests in one day. In college, it's at most two tests per day and at most four classes per day. It was a lot more manageable. Lowell taught me to prioritize and manage my time. I am really grateful for all of the pain and lessons I had to endure at Lowell because it made college a lot more enjoyable, being able to manage time, being able to prioritize friendships, being able to do school, and explore my interests. That was huge. I probably couldn't have done it had I not gone to Lowell and be thrown right into the blender.”
Experience what student life is like at Lowell High School in Try Harder, airing Monday, May 2nd at 10/9c on PBS, part of Independent Lens.