From: Floyd from Farmville
Date: Day 1
Subject: FW: Scholarship Application Deadline is coming up
To: Students in my class
Students:
I believe the following scholarship may be of interest to you.
-Floyd
--Forwarded message followed, which included the deadline and the appropriate web page for the scholarship--
Regular readers of CM can likely see where this is going. I received the following a day later.
From: Suzy Snowflake
Date: Day two
Subject: RE: FW: Scholarship Application Deadline is coming up
To: Floyd
Can you please let me know if (certain demographic) students can apply for the Scholarship?
Thanks in advance. Have a good day.
Where, oh where, could one find such information?
I had a student who could have been one of the great basket-weavers. She was driven to weave surprisingly beautiful baskets. I told her there was a basket-weaving scholarship, that she should apply, that I would gladly write a letter of recommendation for her, that no one else had applied yet, and that the deadline was approaching.
ReplyDeleteThe deadline passed, and no one applied for the scholarship. Free fucking money. And the honor. A ticket to bigger, better things. All of it could have been hers.
I tried. I really tried. The application was so simple and short.
I still like that student, but I gave up after that.
Why do they do this?
WHY?!?!?!
WHY????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?
Why?
I didn't apply to Harvard because I thought their application was ridiculous. Judging by what happened later with other applications, I might have been accepted but I would not have gone. So that one didn't matter. But every little hurdle, no matter how low, weeds someone out.
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