Missing a Scholarship

When I was in my last year of high school, I missed one of the most valuable opportunities of my life.

For high school students, there was a scholarship called the King's Scholarship, provided by the government. Students who received it had a chance to further their studies abroad, anywhere in the world — and they were not required to pay back their tuition or living costs.

Because of that, the level of competitiveness and difficulty of getting this scholarship was out of this world.

Applying anyway

At first I was not interested, because I was nervous about competing against the country's top students. I kept wondering whether I had a chance of winning any of them.

After thinking for a while, I decided to stop overthinking and started writing the application forms.

And then I did not study for the test at all. All I did was play video games and hang out with my friends — while knowing that other students were practising extremely hard for the same scholarship.

The exam

Two months later, the cruel exam period arrived.

Of the five subjects I needed to sit, only mathematics and science were the ones most students found challenging. I handled the rest of them well, because those questions were trouble-free.

On the maths part, I surprisingly could solve almost every problem. That was the first moment I realised I could achieve the impossible.

Then brutal reality hit. I was entirely clueless about the chemistry and biology parts of the science exam.

Expectedly, I was not qualified for the scholarship.

If I had studied, I would have been abroad now. In the end I could not do anything but feel disappointed in myself.

To prevent this from happening again, I learned to always put my best effort into everything.