4 months from now, I’ll be racing at The RAD Dirt Fest in Trinidad, Colorado. I’d say all because of a scholarship, but the scholarship comes after the first part.
You have to apply.
Applying to a scholarship is a unique mix of believing in yourself and being okay with asking for help to get there.
I could have figured out how to pay the race fee, and the travel costs, and probably thought about it a really long time. But I wasn’t confident about it. I was hesitant.
And then I won the scholarship.
It felt like a boost of somebody pushing me up a hill. To have somebody else, this mysterious selection committee on my team. A boost of confidence in me - I belong on that start line next to very, very qualified, competitors.
I didn’t apply to many scholarships in high school. I really struggled with that first part of feeling worthy of entering. Now that I’m a little more well-versed in cognitive behavioral therapeutic techniques, I know if I had examined those thoughts about feeling worthy, they were not actually backed up by any tangible evidence. I had to ask a science teacher for a letter of recommendation to participate in a summer internship program my junior year of high school. I didn’t even think the teacher knew my name, let alone which class I was in. I was wrong, he wrote me a lovely letter, and I had a great experience interning with the San Diego Zoo. (As a result of this experience, I try really hard to learn all of my students’ names and use them frequently. There are mnemonic devices and memory techniques that can help anyone learn names well. #psychterm) That first experience of asking for a letter of recommendation, asking somebody to write on paper all these things that they think about you and your abilities, was terrifying to me as a sixteen year old. But I’m so glad I asked.
It’s graduation day, and one thing I’d like to tell my seniors that completed high school is that scholarship season isn’t over. There’s going to be more chances for you to earn an opportunity. Some scholarships are formal, others may be more of a subtle invitation. Sometimes you’re in the right place at the right time, or in my case, following the right Instagram account or Facebook group. That’s networking skills at work. Scholarship organizers really, really want you to apply to their awards, but you’ve got to actively do some searching to make those connections. I don’t know if any students took up the offer of Outdoor Outreach’s bicycle program, or a summer job working with pack mules in the Sierras, but I advertised those to my classes this year, if students were checking their messages.
Scholarships often don’t cover the whole bit. There’s still a lot of costs that are going to be involved with racing.
I turned down a pretty decent scholarship package to a college that was much farther away from home because of all of the added costs of travel and the logistics of just getting there. I had to take a number of busses and the trolley through downtown San Diego to get to and from my internship at the zoo that summer. I didn’t realize how differently I lived compared to some of the other students from other parts of the county. There’s been a lot written about the challenges of college scholarship recipients experiencing a socio-economic culture shock. Again, I’m not here to write extensively on that research, but I’ve experienced a taste of it as a teenager, a bit as a young adult, and I’m still thinking about what it means to come from a background like mine with a future in participating in racing events. (Future post for sure.)
Tangent, about 3 years ago, I thought about getting into running with the ultimate goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon. Then I found out the average participant spends about $5,000 to run the Boston Marathon- that’s the airfare, hotel, race fee around the event, not working with a coach, running shoes, racing qualifying events, etc. I found that to be really disheartening, and didn’t really work on my running skills.
So, I think about money a lot as it relates to recreation, but also money as a gift. People can give you money, or things of monetary value, really quite easily. This is a phenomenal concept.
You cannot be gifted health and wellness in the same way.
I’m thankful for the scholarship to the Rad Fest, so that I can put in some work on my own personal health and wellness so that I can be a better mom to my kids, and feel better as I’m looking at my 40s next year.
Thanks for reading, plenty of more thoughts to come, if you’d like to drop an emoji in the comments to let me know you’re out there, I’d appreciate it, but after a year of online teaching, I’m also mostly okay with sending my thoughts out into the void. :)
😊
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