Student stressed out by tryout season, loses hope and yacht

Warning: the following is a piece of satire. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Attempt to disseminate meaning will result in confusion, misinformation and mood swings.
Sophomore Jimmy Lin was a typical tryhard student. He hated coming up second. He wanted to go to his dream school, see the world, learn from the best and secure his financial future. After college, he’d take a job somewhere important and make a lot of money. Sometime in his late 20s, he’d find the One, who’d convince him to settle down. After years of tireless work, he’d buy a large house somewhere on the beachfront with his retirement savings and purchase a glistening white yacht that he’d take out every day for the rest of his life.
This future, 16-year-old Lin convinced himself, was firmly dependent on his ability to be admitted for AP and Honors courses during the upcoming tryout season.
Day after day, he labored to the Media Center, the Career Center and various teachers’ classrooms to retrieve application packets and attend prosaic PowerPoint presentations. He had to buckle up the courage to ask his teachers, almost all of them, for teacher recommendations. Chances are, Lin had to also attend after school placement exams, as 15 out of 28 classes require, and sacrifice several afternoon naps.
Some time in late March, a sleepless Lin filled out his preliminary schedule for the counselors and shuddered when he realized that he’d signed up for five Honors classes. He also made a silent prayer that he wouldn’t have to take that one class taught by the notoriously unpleasant teacher.
In April, Lin walked classroom to classroom with his fingers crossed and became perpetually nervous. He dreaded this time of the year, and the incessant “Don’t worry about it”s people gave him did nothing to ease his anxiety. He had a decent GPA, of course, but everything was fair game once tryout season came around.
One by one, the results came out. Lin and his friends gathered around various classrooms, both excited and terrified to see the results. And Lin, through luck and hard work, was four out of five classes down when he and his friends careened down to the final Honors class. When he squeezed his way to the middle of the ruckus, he apprehensively traced his finger down the list. Jenny Li, Richard Li, January Lin, Justine Lin. He panicked. “Where is my name?” he thought. This can’t be right. And how did RICHARD LI make the class, but not me? The extremely competitive Lin was outraged.
He rushed to the teacher’s side begging for a chance. He was qualified! He was desperate! After five minutes of futile pleading, he returned to his friends, all of whom had made the class. They comforted him, but it was no use. He sulked home, defeated, and solemnly declared to his parents that his dreams were over. He was wrong.
In the next 50 years, despite his minor tryout disappointment, he indeed attended his dream school. When he was 28, he found the One, and they had a legendary romance before starting a family. After he retired, he moved to a beautiful beachfront estate like he’d always dreamed of. All of the stress from high school and college and work was gone. 65 year old Jimmy Lin rose one morning, walked his dog along the beach and saw Richard Li’s glistening white yacht sail by, but it didn’t matter to him anymore.