aspiring scholars
1.22.2004
One of the more unusual tasks I have to undertake in the line of duty is screening scholarship entries. The company I work for is the administrator for a college scholarship competition in which the entrants apply online, answering short essay questions. As tens of thousands enter, we need to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Although it's an unusual job, it's also mind-numbingly boring, I'm sorry to say. Once the novelty wears off, scholarship screening turns a person into a drone with a finger hovering over the discard button. It's remarkable how few really unique experiences end up in scholarship entries. It makes you very jaded. Dean's Lists, cheerleading captains, torn ACL recoveries, and valedictorians all fail to impress me.
However, reading scholarship entries puts you in touch with the thought processes of thousands of college students. It's informative. I'm glad to say there are quite a number of young (and not so young) people who want “meaningful” careers - in service to humanity or to contribute to art or literature. I'm sorry to find that so many young women think that a “big success” is graduating from high school without getting pregnant. Most of the entries manage to be reasonably coherent, though I sometimes encounter some pretty dreadful malapropisms. There are a lot of eating disorders out there, and a lot of parents who actually tell their children that they could never make it into such-and-such college, which I find appalling. One young woman said that success was good, but rubbing it in the face of people who doubted her was better. Yow.
Reading all these entries puts me in touch with a kind of high school psyche — and reminds me of my own high school years. High schools are like their own very small, insular, rather warped societies. Things that are insignificant to the outside world can be deathly important to high schoolers. In some ways it amazes me that people come out of the experience with healthy minds — and some don't, I suppose.
Still, it's heartening to know that there are so many people out there with determination to better themselves through education, and mostly with good motives — kids who want to be teachers, mothers who are returning to school to inspire their children, workers reeducating themselves for more meaningful professions. It makes up for the times when I think to myself, “If I have to read the words ‘honor role’ [sic] one more time, I'm going to scream...”
