The only source of knowledge is Experience — Albert Einstein.

Today I’m going to talk about my experiences about scholarshipssss

Start point

From the beginning, I have never thought I would become a scholarship hunter until one of my friends got the exchange scholarship going to Japan for 10days. Before that, my dream is to travel the world when I can earn plenty of money by myself. However, I have changed my mind because I saw my friend has created such a great relationship with other participants and sharing each other cultures. Indeed, I started my journey of being a scholarship hunter.

I was studying at Vientiane High School in grade 9, that one friend ( fomer of scholarship) was inviting me and another one friend to submit the application form. At that time, we were BFF and we expected to get the scholarship together. Unfornately, we were not selected at interview round. In this first program I applied, it taught me a lot and I knew what I did wrong. The thing is I didn’t know about information of other 2countries that would participated in, so I didn’t prepare for it. This’s my first mistake and second one’s I answered to a question that should NOT be said with judgers which was : IDK (I don’t know). At that point, I was excited and didn’t want to say what I haven’t prepared (It’s a kind of shame if I told a lie and they knew it I wouldn’t have a place to stay). Finally, I got my first experience of being a failure examiner in the exchange scholarship field and I obviously remember it.

Next, I started searching for other exchange scholarships for high school students and I found one which was JENESYS.

First of all, I read all of the information on website and printed out the application form to fill in. I was paying lots of attention in this exchange scholarship and completed everything perfectly on time. I wasn’t really good at English, so I asked my uncle for a help. Well done! I submitted the application form, but I was not selected to go to interview round. Whatever, I believed that my essays were not exciting enough to make judgers wanted to interview me. Again, failures never let me down. I kept submitting Jenesys forms for 3batches and I was not selected again and again. All in all, this scholarship taught me that if your profile and your thoughts aren’t a type of what they’re looking for, you’ll never be the finalist.

Though, I looked for other exchange scholarships. Southeast Asia Youth Leadership Program and Singapore Youth Camp were my next experiences.

Both of them were not available for my age because I entered school faster than my classmates a year, so I couldn’t get it. In contrast, it didn’t mean that I can’t submit application form and take a test. I completed everything and the results was the same I was not selected😭

In my opinion, I may not suite to the exchange scholarship, but I kept searching for what I want. Then I found another scholarship related to ideas and problem-solving about “Peace” in Hiroshima, Japan. Finally, I got it and it’s called: “Hiroshima Junior International Forum”.

Because I’m a person who really hate war and history taught us a lot about political conflicts, so I did well on my essays when submitted the application form. When I knew I was selected to be representative of Laos to participate in this program, I suddenly checked the weather, prepare clothes, more details of Peace builders essays and so on. I have lived in Hiroshima for 5days in meeting conferences discussing about the problems and visited Hiroshima Museum. I’ve got so many friends and so many ideas of the purpose in the forum, I got to know Hiroshima Governer and many others official workers. I was so proud to be part of young generations to create good relationship with many representatives from different parts of the world and we together can share ideas of PEACE. Indeed, I could say that this forum should be continuing and one day it’ll become a strong voice in this globe.

My another journey began with “Mekong Friendship Forum 2016". I was one of ten representatives to visit 2 world heritages sites and share our cultures to 5countries of GMS (Great Mekong Subregion) in ASEAN.

I first met my cute roommate from Cambodia in this program. Her name is Roselin, she’s very friendly and funny. We both shared our lives story through conversations before we slept. Memories between us couldn’t be forgotten. During this project, we all have activities everyday after all day long (Sight seeing the world heitage sites and heard different histories from each place). Usually our activities were made for us tackling problems while creating a firmly relationship between countries. To conclude, this project is about friendship of GMS countries in ASEAN and I was so proud of presenting Laos with another 9people in the forum. This project holds annually so keep searching for it. “Opportunity won’t come when you do nothing for it”.

After entering Faculty of Architecture, I don’t often finding for an exchange scholarship due to lack of time and I want to concentrate on my goal of being an architect. However, there’s one that I’m very interested in and it’s called: “ UGRAD “ stands for Global Undergraduate Exchange Scholarship.

At first, I knew this on my faculty group page shared by a former of UGRAD, a beautiful sister👩. I thought I could apply for it during in year 1, but it’s not eligible. I wait for it for a year with preparation and pay attention a lot while submitting the application form. In addition, each step I prepared and did my best to get it. Finally, “Hard work produces good result” I am selected and currently in the process of supplying more documents.

In this blog, I don’t only want to share my experiences but I want to let you know that everyone has their own targets and everyone can do someting or do nothing for it. So

Define your own “Success”

Don’t compare others to yours

Success usually comes after failures.

Thank you for reading this till the end🙏🙏🙏

Want to know more about each scholarship, inbox me😉