My ambition

“You are very ambitious. If I were you, I wouldn’t do it”, one of my friends told me. It was in January two years ago when I told my friend about my decision to apply for an exchange program to Australia namely “Peace Scholarship”. Given to the limited seats available, that program was very competitive, only the best of the best had the chance. And I was not.

Applying for the Peace Scholarship Program was a long complicated tiring process. First, I had to take the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). I spent like a month to prepare for that English test; however, the result was very low, at least low to my expectation, though it met the program requirement. Filling in the application also took another month to do so. I had to do research so as to write essay that sound more appealing than others. The application form itself was around ten pages long and many of them were essay-format questions.

To others, the application process, but to me it did. Probably because I wanted the scholarship too much that I gave away all my attention to make myself one of the outstanding candidates. I also worked hard in getting that scholarship also because everybody was counting on me. Since I was one of the only 9 students to receive the most outstanding student award of the year, people thought I would definitely get that scholarship. This put even a heavier pressure on me.

Nevertheless, no matter how hard I worked, I was not successful. I felt down upon hearing about the result. Everyone pitied me because they knew I had been preparing to apply for that program for months. I felt totally lost. After some time of thinking and looking back at what I had done, I felt better. Better because though I wasn’t selected to go to Australia, there were a lot I had learnt during the application process. I was able to identify my strength and weakness. I learnt to look at and describe my good personalities. More importantly, I learnt to appreciate the process not the result itself. I mean, getting to study abroad was good. But even if we are not successful, it is not a total a waste of time, because along the way to get the application done, it prompts us to think of many things. And that many things wouldn’t come to our mind if we were not asked in the application form. By the time I finished with the application form, I knew more about myself.

Knowing about myself also helped me to consider why I was not successful. Despite my strong academic background, I didn’t have enough experience in social work, which was one of the most important criteria for successful candidate. Moreover, we needed to demonstrate extensive knowledge of our society in our, but mine was just what I learnt from books, not from hand-on experience like those successful candidates. Thus, they were selected and I was not.

Though I couldn’t get to the Peace Scholarship Program, I am happy for taking the opportunity to go for that. At least, I have done my best and learnt something during the selecting process. Actually, those knowledge and strength have helped me to be even more successful in my academic and social life ever since.