Scholarship Aftermath: Dealing with Loss and Disappointment

I was talking with a friend last night whose recent scholarship interview has left her a bit upset and frustrated at the moment. She felt like she did great, and that she deserved to move on to the next round of the process, but ultimately, she was not selected.

If you’ve read my article on success, you’ll know that I understand the feeling. When I learned that I did not move on to the final interview round for the Loran Award I was devastated. For the week after the results were revealed, I experienced a bag of emotions.

I was mad at the judges for making the “mistake” of not putting me through. I read the profiles of the previous year’s winners, and felt that I was just as good as any of them. I was upset when I learned that I did worse than other semi-finalists who I expected to do better than.

But whenever you’re emotional, it’s hard to think rationally and objectively. You start to try and come up with any reason to justify why things didn’t go your way. For instance, at that exact moment of defeat, the whole process seemed unfair – the judges only had my application and met me for only about an hour in total. They never saw me or my work in action. I thought to myself: “how could they make an important decision with such little information?”

Realize: The Scholarship Program is in Charge, Not You

In order to deal with loss, you have to let go of your emotions so that you can think rationally again. The first thing you need to realize is that you’re not entitled to anything, and you never were. The scholarship was never yours to lose in the first place. You’re not on the scholarship committee, so why should you feel as if you know better than them?

The fact of the matter is that the scholarship committee has their own criteria for selecting recipients, and therefore, they are in charge; in a way, they are “always right”. Realize that because you were never “entitled” to anything in the first place, you can’t say that it was unfair for you not to move on or win. The only facts you know are that, according to the committee, someone else was more deserving of the scholarship based on their criteria (and often you don’t even know this exact criteria).

Furthermore, since you did not read the other applications or observe the other interviews, how can you say you did better than someone else in the process? Remember that only the judges have the available information to make these decisions. Yes, it’s true they have a limited amount of information about you – but this is also true for everyone else. The process is fair in the sense that, for the most part, everyone gets the same treatment. Sometimes that works for you, and sometimes that works against you – it’s a part of life, and you have to deal with it.

For example, for the Loran Award, the interviews play a significantly greater role than in most scholarship processes. They interview more students than any Canadian scholarship I know of, and even have two rounds of interviews for sponsored candidates. The fact of the matter is that well-spoken individuals will have a distinct advantage in the Loran Award process. Some frustrated students I’ve met have complained that this isn’t fair, citing that the work that you’ve done tells a more accurate story of your leadership potential than how well you can put your thoughts and ideas into words. Whether that idea has merit is irrelevant. You must realize that we have no right to judge the methods of the Loran Award – it is their scholarship, and they have every right to choose their selection process.

Some Things are Just Out of Your Control

The reason why we often struggle to understand this idea of objectivity is because we take things personal and for granted. We often compare ourselves with others, and based on those personal comparisons, we produce expectations of ourselves and get frustrated when we can’t meet those expectations. Having expectations is not a bad thing, but being unable to reconcile your expectations with reality is unhealthy.

Losing in the scholarship process does not make you any less of a leader, volunteer, or human being than someone who did better. So someone did better in the process than you – does that really affect you? Does it change how you will interact with others?

You need to understand that some things are just not in your control. When it comes to scholarship applications and interviews, all you can do is put your best foot forward and hope for the best. I know this sounds cliché, but this is a cliché that everyone says they understand but often don’t live. I myself struggle with this all the time, and am constantly trying to improve my attitude when it comes to losing.

Variance

Like with many things in life, there is variance. That is, although many things in life generally happen as they are expected to in the long run, there will always be random times out of your control when they won’t. For example, if you flip a coin, in the long run, it should come up heads half the time. However, due to short term variance, you might flip all heads in your first 10 tries.

In the same way, variance is involved in our lives whether we want it to or not. And without a doubt, there is a lot of luck and variance involved in the scholarship process. Do I think there are skills and strategies you can employ to improve your chances of winning? Of course – you can always work on improving your essay writing and interview skills. But that doesn’t mean you don’t still need to have luck on your side to do well. Something as simple as not being sick on interview day significantly improves your chances of doing well. There are a lot of chance variables that can affect your success – sometimes they improve your chances, and unfortunately, they also sometimes decrease your chances. Variance is a part of life, and you need to understand that.

For instance, you don’t decide which applicants are in your pool. It’s possible in some years the applicant pool is much larger or much stronger. Imagine 2003, the year of the double cohort in Ontario, where graduating high school students had to compete with significantly more applicants for the same number of scholarship and post-secondary spots – these things happen, and you can only do so much about it.

During my Loran semi-finalist interviews, the 50 or so students at the Toronto event were divided into about five groups of ten, each with an associated judging panel. Is it possible that given a different combination of students and judges in my group, I would’ve won a spot for the nationals? Of course, it’s entirely possible. On other hand, it’s also possible that no matter what combination of students and judges I was given, I would never have made it anyways. Either way, we will never know. The fact is you can’t control things like that, and therefore, there’s no point filling your mind with “what if’s”.

Luck has no personality or intentions. It is random. And in that sense, it theoretically evens out in the end – of course, this doesn’t mean it will. But if you can’t control it, why waste time thinking about it?

Again, all you can do is work hard to maximize your chances, and hope luck is on your side.

The Hidden Luck Factor: Connecting with the Judges

Whenever an interview is part of a process, building a rapport or connection with your judge significantly affects your chances. At the end of the day, a judge is going to prefer a finalist who they had a good conversation and interview with, and generally, conversations go better when the two sides have built a strong connection. As a judge, you want to be as impartial as possible, but the fact of the matter is that your connection with interviewees will be affected to some degree by things outside of your control. This is no one’s fault; it’s just a fact of life.

Being able to build a strong connection with a judge often depends on getting lucky that you two share mutual interests or ideas. The more you have in common with someone, the easier it is to explain yourself to them and establish a good rapport with them.

During my Loran Award interviews, I never felt like I established any connection whatsoever with any of my judges. For whatever reason, it just didn’t happen and I just didn’t feel it. I don’t think I performed well on the interview by any means, but my performance and the result were undoubtedly affected by my lack of connection with my judges.

Conversely, I had an extremely fortunate situation at my TD Canada Trust Scholarship interviews. I have always been passionate about working with youth and children, which is why I am interested in pursuing a medical career in pediatrics, as well as possible side initiatives in mentoring and educating young people. Lo and behold, my judges included Canadian Senator Landon Pearson (child advocate) and Dr. Miriam Rossi (paediatrician) who I obviously connected with.

Because I shared common interests with some of my judges, talking to them was very easy for me, and I believe we were able to connect on a deeper level with a common understanding. And while I did feel that I did pretty well in terms of being interviewed, I am sure my confidence and ability to be understood was helped by the connection I was able to build with my judges.

And so I basically have two main points I want to get across. The first is that depending on who interviews you, you may or may not be able to build as strong a connection as you like. The second point though is that you should realize the importance of building the best rapport with the judges that you can, and just hope it works out in your favour.

Grow Stronger and Keep Looking Forward

I know it’s hard, but you have to realize that this moment is but one of a million moments in your entire life. You will learn from this experience, and you will become better for it. What’s done is done, the past is the past. The longer you dwell in the past, the less you can live in the present and dream of the future.

What matters is what you choose to do with this experience as you go forward – and that depends on your attitude. Trust me when I say that keeping a positive, upbeat attitude about loss and disappointment goes a long way and is an important skill that will serve you well for your entire life.

There will be many more opportunities in the future, but you won’t see them or be able to give them your all if your mind is distracted by shortcomings of the past.