I, like many of the rest of you, bumbled onto this site thanks to FastWeb's helpful suggestion that the Progressive U people like giving money to kids for that opulently expensive fairytale experience called college. I found it after more than two weeks of slogging daily through a plethora of websites proffering hundreds of thousands of dollars to the deserving student, only to find after registering my email address on fifty different search engines (god, you have to see my inbox to believe it) that because my great grandmother chewed Chiclets or because I wear red nail varnish or some similarly obscure eligiblity rule, my one-hour diversion to Textbooks.com or whatever turned out to be a bit, or I guess completely, pointless.
Enter Progressive U into this scholarly drama, where I discover that through sheer dedication to venting myself online, as well as a mysterious program of point accumulation, I could earn one-fiftieth of the cost of my Master's degree program. An opportunity I could hardly pass up!
One caveat: the scholarship is for the 2009-2010 school year. Funny that the reason I decided on a Master's program in London, rather than one in the States, is that I hoped to save myself some money with a one-year program, compared to the two-year programs here. So the Progressive U scholarship, even if I did win it in 2009, would serve only as an exclamation mark to follow the expletives that are sure to pop out of me after a year of living in London with a 2-to-1 exchange rate. Irony is only funny on South Park, it turns out.
But I stayed, and I'm writing this! Why? Partly because I just had to vent the mounting frustration with this silly scholarship-application foolishness. But there is maybe something else. I think I really believe that the whole concept behind blogging is just lovely: Everyone should have the chance to expose herself--our lumpy, embarrassing, often shocking self--to the entire world, and dare everyone who reads it to comment on the blatantly obvious, that is, how really very uninteresting we are.
That's what this whole scholarship-process has been about for me, and I have an inkling that every mendicant student can sympathize: Searching for a way to convince the selectors and judges that I am remarkable, witty, gorgeous, full of potential, passionate, aspirational, active--all the while positive that I am really just another embarrassingly mundane young person, desperate like everyone else to make the world a better/easier place for me to hang out for the next fifty or so years. That's it. I read the past winners' essays, hoping to find some clue to what makes a person remarkable (or worth a $1,000 scholarship), and it's quite clear to me that these kids are exactly the same as me--bumbling, overly reliant on a thesaurus, half-hoping that someone will see how captivating we are. I am just captivated with myself, and I am trying to list to everyone else why I think am I so enchanting.
In a weird way, I feel like by trying highlight how different I am from everyone else, I've proven the opposite. And also I've become part of some universal brotherhood of people who are now bored of their individuality. Kudos to the rest of you who keep plugging away at it. For today, at least, I'm signing off, heading for a dinner of humble pie and an episode of South Park.
hands down best blog I've read on this site.
There are some one year master's programs here in the states, depending on what you're looking into. I personally am probably going to apply for a MS in Nutrition at Columbia, which will take one full year to complete (at the insane cost of $37,000).
I feel obliged to clear a few things up. You can use the scholarship on any term you choose, up UNTIL the like... June 2010, I think. So you could use it for next Fall. However, you can only use it in a nationally accredited school (US nationally accredited), which means you can't use it if you go to a master's program in London (sponsored by what I'm assuming is Oxford or some other English University).
~C
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That could be good news for me! I'm going to the London School of Economics, which I do know is nationally accredited for purposes of federal student aid, so maybe it counts for this scholarship. Thanks for the update!
I totally agree with you. Although I love the access to more scholarships that websites like Fastweb provide, I am disappointed that everyone else knows about them, as well. Good luck on receiving your Masters. I admire you for such drive! I'm also captivated by your writing style, very engaging blog!
You shouldn't let the fact that others will be applying as well scare you off. Someone has to win. Why can't it be you?
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I as well have been performing numerous scholarship match search engines and have been digging through pages of books to find out exactly which scholarships I am eligible for.
But I've never thought about it is "1/50th" of my degree. I guess when I compare a 500 or 1000 dollar scholarship to another I see that may be 10,000 dollars, I think it's not really so important to focus on the 1,000 dollar scholarship.
You've put me into perspective.
Everything adds up. Have you ever worked in a restaurant before? I have. The $200 per night in tips doesn't come all at once. It adds up over the course of the night. $5 here and $10 there soon becomes enough to pay the bills. The same goes for scholarships.
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I'm doing this because it'll help pay for books lol.
Ey, anything helps
[Krst]