With last week’s arrival of the surprising news regarding
the Rhodes Scholarship, I have been putting my nose to the grindstone. The
final interview is known for being notoriously difficult. The judges, most of
who are Rhodes Scholars themselves, try to make your head spin. They will ask
questions that come out of left field just to test how well you react to not
knowing a topic. Therefore, most of my free time now consists of preparing for
the mental hurtle.
Anytime I drive in Norman, I play NPR through an app on my
phone. When I have the time, I try to wrap my head around the complex law that
is the Affordable Care Act. The same thing applies to the study of linguistics
and philology because I proposed to pursue a Masters in those subjects at
Oxford. Overall, it’s a humbling experience. It has been a great reminder of
how little I actually know. It has strengthened my desire to be a life-long
learner. I feel a renewed appetite to bite into the subjects and topics that
have always interested me. At the same time, I must say that I’m a little
disappointed in myself that it took the possibility of a scholarship to
encourage me to do something I should have been doing all along.
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| A screenshot of a comic I've read that does a through job of explaining the ACA. Found at boingboing.net. |
When it comes to the interview, I have been lucky enough to
receive some perspective. My scholarship coordinator, Melanie Wright, sent me ‘debriefings’
of people who had interviewed in the past. One in particular helped me to calm
down. She mentioned that she had said “I don’t know” at least four times in her
interview, and when everything was said and done, she still got the
scholarship. The way I see it, the purpose of the interview is to confirm who I
am based on what I submitted in my application. I do not want to go in there
feeling I have to prove myself further or impress people. I think my best
chance comes from focusing on communicating who I am.
