#uwccsc

[huffeldooduffle]

Orientation

On Monday (tomorrow), school will finally begin. Right now, rain is drizzling down as the sky rumbles. It’s beautiful to watch, especially from the window view of my room–like a watercolor painting of subtle grays and urgent flashes.

Frankly, I’m pretty excited to start because I haven’t gone to school for about… um… three months, I think? Yeah. My brain will probably have to load for long…

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[my-philosophyoflifeiswork]

It all started

*I wrote this 358 days ago. I had the intention of starting a blog at the time, which for some weird reason I never did. So here it goes.*

I want to write my story, in case anyone is interested, but mainly so I can read it again 20 years from now and remember how it all started.

I should probably start telling about my dream. I wanted to have a successful career (and life in general) since I was a little girl. However, that’s not very uncommon. A lot of students want to have a successful life and career. The thing that made and makes me different from the mainstream is the fact that I’ve always been more ambitious I always strove to be best I could. So I’ve always done my best at everything mainly when I got high school because I wanted to get in a good university. Besides all of that, probably because of the recession, I’ve made my mind that I wanted to go to University somewhere else which meant getting even better grades so I could be able to get a scholarship if needed.

But this was all before I knew. It started in the summer of 2014. One day my mom got home from work and said “O Luís foi hoje para a Índia!” (Luís went to India today) and didn’t understood because the statement was completely out of context. Thus she explained that this friend of us had gotten into this program called UWC and was leaving for his second year in one of the program’s school in India. I was amazed already. But little did I know.

“Can anything be that good?” Well, as you can imagine, when I realized I had already read all the information available about UWC and fallen in love with the concept.

The selection process to win a scholarship or simply a place is organized by a National Committee, therefore varies from country to country. In Portugal, the selection process has 2 stages. The first was to send a written application which included two essays, grades, teachers recommendations and some (a lot) question. As I read the requirements, my curiosity started to grow and possibility got stuck in my mind. The only problem that I found was the fact that if I got in I would lose a year, but the more I read about it the more I was sure that it would be completely worth it.

When my mom told me about Luis’ adventure she never thought I would be so enthusiastic with the idea.  When I told my parents that I was going to apply they said they I should go for it, but they weren’t very certain about it. A few days later I sat down with them and told them everything I had learnt about UWC. They were as amazed as I were and told me “to apply but without expectations”. That was clearly impossible as I wanted to go really bad.

I spent the rest of the summer holidays thinking about UWC. However, I made a commitment with myself. I would “forget the idea” until Christmas because I didn’t wanted to lose focus on school. On Christmas holidays I wrote my entire application. All the questions, essays and forms were ready. When school started I only had to ask for the recommendation which was kind of hard because it was the first time I had to explain what UWC was and what I was applying to. Fortunately, the teachers I asked were tireless and wrote two pretty amazing recommendation letters. After that everything was ready.

On January the 24th I sent my application and then waited. I was so obsessed. I looked for new information every day. I got to the point where that was everything I wanted, there was no going back. There were 6 scholarships for Portugal, but only a full one, which meant the competition, was going to be hard.

The second stage was a challenge weekend plus an interview. The NC would select 20 applicants to participate in it, and announce them about two weeks later. I was so freaking nervous.

Anyway, two weeks went by. I didn’t want to tell anything to anyone. I didn’t want any pressure on me. Very few people knew besides my parents and brothers and the teachers I had to ask for the recommendation letters.

February 8th was the day. I had been checking my e-mail every hour for the last two days and I remember clearly that it was around 4pm on a Sunday when I refreshed my e-mail page and the new e-mail was there. It said First Stage Results. I was very, very anxious. I took a deep breath and open the e-mail. It said “Congratulations, you’ve been selected to the next stage of the process (…)”. I didn’t read anything else because I started crying of happiness. My parents came to see if I was okay and in between tears I managed to tell them the great new. When I stopped crying I went and read the whole e-mail. There was a lot of information, but in resume I had to go to Lisbon, the capital, to the Challenge Weekend on the 16th and 17th of February.

We had to stay the night in a Motel. There were 20 of us, excited young girls and boys, full of dreams and expectations (and a friend of mine from Vila Real). We connected immediately. I remember that weekend as one of the most demanding and fun days of my life. We had a lot of group activities, debate hours about typical global and regional issues and in the end an individual interview. We cooked the dinner and all. At the end of the first day I felt like I had known them for years. In the end we were all sad because we knew not all of us would get the scholarship.

Meanwhile, especially after the Challenge Weekend my closest friends started to suspect. They knew something was going on. I told them I was in a big project, something good and promised to tell about it in two weeks.

We were supposed to receive an answer in two weeks. Those were probably the two worse weeks of my life. I was absolutely obsessed. I couldn’t focus in anything else. But the on February 22th I got The call. It was Isabel, one UWC Alumni that was a part of the NC, saying that I hadn’t been selected. I was a wreck. I cried the whole afternoon. My parents tried to calm me down but they knew that was a possibility. When they told me not to put my expectation there I should have followed their advice.

I was hard to see all who got selected for each scholarship and all but after a while I had moved on. Although I was still considering the possibility of applying next year and there was still a little possibility of getting a scholarship in the International Lists, I moved on.

Two months later, I had had a rough day and I had gone to bed extra early because of that. But I remember clearly that my mom went to my room and said that her and my dad had to talk to me. As I was so tired I sent her away. However, I laid there thinking in what trouble I had gotten into. I was so tired that I fell asleep right away. Next morning I only had school at 10 am and I didn’t even remember the previous day conversation so when my mom called my downstairs I was completely out. Both my parents were in the dining room and my mom was holding a paper with a red ribbon around it. They said they had something for me. I remember being so confused and thinking “Wtf is happening?”. I got the paper and opened it and in the moment I saw the picture and the UWC China logo I started crying. I couldn’t believe. Besides the fact that I had forgot about UWC, I nevermore remembered that there was a possibility of the opening of an UWC in China.

I parents gave me one day to decide, but in the minute I knew I had a change my decision was made.

At first, it seemed like there was not a chance for me, like I might be staying in Portugal (don’t get me wrong, I love Portugal) and suddenly I was going to literally the other side of the world, China.

I leave tomorrow.