Always the Unexpected
Woman in the Middle | April 18, 2015This is the fourth year I have been scholarship chairperson for an organization I belong to. While time-consuming and sometimes difficult (Just like on those TV singing shows, I have to participate in eliminating some really lovely and deserving young women…sigh) it is rewarding in that I get to meet some really great young women with interesting personal stories. My committee and I also get to make one high school senior really happy when we give her a scholarship.
Just like with so many activities that involve dealing with human beings, sometimes funky things can happen. Every year, I get a handful of girls that don’t submit a complete application package. I always wonder how someone can forget to include two reference letters, or their grades, when both of those things are very normal requirements in scholarship applications.
But this year, being scholarship chair has taken on a new twist. Applicants have to get the applications to me by a certain day, and postmarks are not accept. This is to prevent the dribbling in of applications that were mailed on the last day. Otherwise who knows when they would all get to me. Because everyone likes to wait until the last-minute, many people just drop their applications off at my house. I have one counselor at one high school who collects the applications at his school and brings them to me all at once, usually on the last day. I have no problem with people dropping the applications off and expect it.
But this year, for the first time, I was surprised by the number of people who called me to express extreme remorse at having to ask to drop off their or their daughter’s application. Really folks, it is OK. I think I will be adding that dropping off is OK to the application next year.
Even more odd were the number of people who assumed they would be dropping it of at an office. I never had that before, either. Then there were the people who figured out the address in question was a house, and then called me to express their surprise the address was a house and, once again, asked my forgiveness for then dropping the application off at my house. One father was practically prostrate with remorse at dropping off his daughter’s application at my house. I repeat, this is the first time in four years this has even come up, any of this, and it has come up many times this year.
I find this kind of thing fascinating. What happened this year, and not the other three, that caused total strangers to come up with the same concerns, all on their own? , I find human beings fascinating!
First off, let me congratulate you for taking on such an arduous job. Second, let me just say that I think two reasons some of the girls don’t turn in the grades or the references are because it’s too much trouble and they have other opportunities they are looking at, or they don’t know how to do it and no one is helping them.
Yes humans are fascinating and strange but that is ok, although why so many people would have a problem this year when in the past people didn’t is strange, I also don’t get how people can forget to include important parts of the application but they do as you know