It takes all sorts of people to make the world go round

The short term scholarship interviews are finally going to be over soon. It takes more than a month of hectic life, countless OT into the night, a lung infection and lots of boo-boos to finally make it through. 3 more interviews and it will be over soon. I'm starting to feel that I can finally breathe again.

It really takes all sorts of people to make the world go round. I see engineering professors who are so trapped in their own world that they became so self-centered vs the sociology professor that gave the interviews a humane touch. I really enjoyed the sociology professor's interview sessions. I see students from the different faculties, engineering students are no so eloquent and even dared to attend interview in slippers vs business students who are so well-dressed for the occasion and spoke so well, maybe having countless presentations really helps. There are many cases where students take on part time work as they are in need of money but there's only so many awards to give away, not enough for everyone vs students who only need the extra cash to invest in shares or piano lessons. End of the day, the question is: how will this $3,000 going to make a difference to the lives of those who receives it.

There are some very unique cases as well.

For example, the national fencing girl who is really really passionate about the sports, to the extent that she chose to pay the full tuition fee which costs $22,000++ a year just so that she can do PE in NIE without being bonded to MOE. Of course, she has the money and don't really need the $3,000 one-year scholarship but I think it's passion that cannot be bought. There's also a interesting guy who wanted the money so that he can start his own business and keep telling the interviewers not to reveal his business plans to others. There's another guy who has been going to Thailand for the past 7 years to teach Chinese to the hill tribe people for a few weeks every year and even picking up very fluent Thai over the years. There's also the guy whose parents didn't wish for him to attend University so that he can take over his father's job to be a mosiac layer but he went against his parents and had to fund his own studies from several jobs. I feel sorry for this last guy as the engineering professors felt that he's unpolished and can survive in all circumstances so thus they felt he didn't deserve the award. I feel that all the more people like him, the underdogs of the society, should be given the money, not only because he genuinely needs it but also as a form of encouragement that he has done the right thing. I am sure that in this case the money would have made more of a difference to him than any other people.

The common thing that binds these people is the passion they have for what they do and to go for it. They really leave me questioning myself.