We know that in one way or the other you all LOVE travelling and we can see that through your entries. At the same time we know that our selection process have flaws and it is not perfect. It felt almost cruel to 'judge' you as a traveller through the answers you have given us. But we do not have any other way to narrow down our selection process.
If you are selected or not, understand that you are an amazing traveller and your love for travel should still remain the same or even more. You all gave us a strong fight.
We had to raise our bars to come to our final list and some of you might not have- due to various reasons- made to the final list. If that is the case, don't let that deter you from your travelling life. Because sometimes our love for travel might not be equally translated through words and expressions and can't be 'judged'.
We also know that all of you are very excited about the results and some of you might make it and some of you might not. We do wanted to give a good news the first thing in the morning, but like a coin, for some it comes with not so good news. So we decided to announce the results later in the day. Thank you everyone for your patience.
We have something for you to read in the mean time while you are waiting for the results.
Are you a passionate traveller? Share your views in the comments.
Good luck again for the results.
Here are some pointers that might help you understand the selection process a bit better.
Bee Gees once sang "It's only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away." Just like that, we also only had your words to try and understand your world.
We are pretty sure that you are an amazingly passionate traveller and you might have travelled far and wide and experienced quite a lot of things during your journeys. But the only way we get to know those stories is through your Words - the answers you have shared with us.
We understand that to be a traveller, you do not need any written words, any photographic evidence, any video proof or anything of that matter. A good traveller just might want to travel and do nothing else. A good traveller need not be a good storyteller, need not be a good photographer or even a good writer.
Unfortunately for the purpose of this Travel Scholarship and for its selection procedure, we want you to express your passion through one of these medium. Otherwise there is no way we can understand more about you. Hence, we had to rely on your written WORDS! And it was only those words that we had to rely on, to know more about you.
So the more you have expressed through these answers, the better we got to know you.
You might not have cleared the first round because
Here is an example. You might be one of the most adventurous travellers and you just mentioned "I love travelling". We know that you mean it 100%, but we are not able to understand that in what ways you love travelling, what makes your travels special and so on. Hence you might have scored a little less for that answer.
Talking of answers, our education system has given us this innate need to give the "Right answers" to score better. In our examinations, even though we didn't really understand the concepts, we did write the right answers, either by memorizing or by any other means.
Even though there were no right or wrong answers for our Travel Scholarship application form, some of you have asked the God of knowledge, 'Google', for answers!
There is nothing wrong in searching for inspirations on the internet, though copying and pasting the exact same words off the internet is not very much appreciated.
All we want is to know you and all you have to do is to be YOU.
We all know that when an interviewer asks what is your weakness, most of the answers are tailored to show a strength of ours through the weakness and most of the answers usually sound phony!
While striving for the 'right answer' we don't care much if the answer sounds phony or not. Believe it or not, human intuitions can tell if certain written words or spoken words are coming from the heart or not.
So if you have googled an answer and submitted as it is, you might have scored quite less for those answers.
Excellence is something that we all strive for. You don't always have to fit in or give the right answer to achieve the excellence. Pretending to believe in an ideology 'cause it is the 'right answer' in a certain situation might not give great results.
These points are not just applicable to Shoshin Tribe's Travel Scholarship application. These are applicable everywhere in our lives.
Be yourself. Let you - the one in a billion, that unique person be yourself. Let your unique personality shine. Sooner or later you will achieve excellence.
So how did you do? How was the experience of applying for the Travel Scholarship? Tell us about your experience.
