Scholarship Workshop Day
We conducted a scholarship workshop for form 4 (senior) students.
— 4 min read
Table of Contents
This Morning
We had breakfast as usual, but today we woke up to find out that one of the faculty got sick which was unfortunate. Also, Katherine and Cameron had been preparing for the scholarship workshop for about 3 days now and they were stressing out. Especially Katherine, since she was the one leading the workshop, she had to figure out a lot of things.
I offered to help by giving them scholarship materials like the Gilman Scholarship essays that I wrote which awarded me some money. Basically, Katherine had to figure out how to present and manage 140 students. Literally, that is a crazy amount given the amount of preparation time we had as well as the fact that the faculty kind of just let Katherine lead the show.
Going to the School
Some of us walked and most of us got driven to St. Mary's Secondary School. Once we got there, Martin offered if we wanted to take a look at the hospital on the other hill. If I'm getting my geographical layout right, the school sat on top of a hill and just about a few hundred meters away was another hill that had a hospital. Rachel, Jenifer, Keisha, Cameron, and I joined Martin to take a look.
After we came back to the hospital, Martin had me give him the essay materials on his usb drive. I honestly didn't think that we would need it since Katherine mentioned we might be stressed for time since our schedule kept getting changed up. Originally, we planned for 9 to 5, but it got pushed forward to 1 to 5.
It was almost 1 and almost showtime so everyone walked up to the gym which freaking had 140 senior high school students waiting at tables. Katherine led the show and presented to all the students with a projector given to us for her powerpoint. Then, we moved on to an activity in which each group is assigned one of the team leads. Some of us volunteered to be team leads and some floaters.
I was a team lead and saw some students reach out to me. There were about 8 students. We went outside and found a good spot with benches near a building and I went and talked about how to find a scholarship. Most of these girls didn't know what a browser was—not even the internet. So, I taught them about how to use a computer, how to use google, and what to search up.
I also taught them how to kind of build a profile of themselves having them identify their strengths, weaknesses, what makes them unique, etc. Furthermore, I told them stories about myself as an example. Since most of the students in the school were orphans, I was able to relate with them a little bit by telling them that I was an orphan and how it came to be. I told them how I overcame the challenges that were thrown onto me. This made them seem more engaged because they could identify some struggles they were having with the same struggles I was having.
After that, we got back into the gym, Katherine did more presentations and we did another activity in which we had all the 140 students read my goddamn scholarship essay. I cannot believe that the essay I wrote would be read by so many people. We, again, were assigned to our original group to supervise them. After that, my group asked to take a picture with me. omg, it was aaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Then, we moved on to another activity in which they write essays themselves and the team leads would give feedback. Afterwards, my group asked for me to memorize each of their names which was hard. To help, they gave me a piece of note with all of their names.
dude I was so socially drained, but they were super cool people and I enjoyed being with them a lot.