Scholarship Woes for Malaysian Top Scorers

Every year I read the same thing over and over again. “10A1s (or A+ as it seems to be now) student did not get PSD scholarship” and each time everyone would go to the press and cry foul.

All right, stop for a while. I’m a scholarship winner with only 6A1s and 3A2 for my 2006 SPM. Okay, so, it’s only MARA scholar. It’s easy yadda, yadda, yadda you guys say. Oi, wanna know the edge I had? MARA scholarships are one-to-one interviews. Even if you’re acting, it won’t show. PSD scholarships are usually done by GROUP interviews. If you guys are the type that only know what’s on the textbook and find it hard to give an opinion without fearing of being wrong…. then 10A+ or no, you’re gonna have a hard time passing the scholarships and NO USE begging for the bloody scholarship.

Doctors are not that real glamorous. If’ you’re on call, you’ll work from 12 to 48 hours straight. And practically, you’ll have to be somewhat emotionally detached from your patient to make a good diagnosis.

Engineers. My brother was an engineer and I hear him going out to work even when it’s not his shift at 3am in the morning.

What else? Teachers. IT IS NOT AN EASY JOB. I was an observer teacher and apprentice teacher for 2 weeks last January and I can say that it is tiring. Satisfactory for someone who loves to see people understand something they do not. It is also a high stress environment too. Seeing the smiles of success on the students makes it all worth it again.

And what do you know…during my two weeks being an apprentice teacher I also found that those who truly have the passion for what they want to be and the want to succeed have the advantage of being noticeable. I conducted a Mock Interview for 4th form students. You could see those who have the passion and those who do not. It was group interviews and those who actually could attract my attention were those who are able to express themselves. When I asked for their PMR results, whaddya know, most of them were 7As or 6As. Those who truly scored 8As were good, but not memorable enough. In group interviews, being memorable is good enough. And oh, one more thing. Answer any questions posed. And I mean anything. It could even come out of the blue like this question.

“Could women be good engineers?”

See what I mean by being opinionated?

Haha…enough ranting.

Cheers.

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~ by jessezrin on May 8, 2010.