Scholarship applications. Part 1: Rhetoric of success (wersja polska poniżej)

Fall of each year is usually the time of intense submitting scholarship applications to various institutions. In recent weeks, graduate students at my university were informed whether they received any support for the upcoming semester. Some applications are still pending. Surely, applying is a ‘year-round’ business for many students, but we definitely experience cumulation of this activity in October of each year.

There are applications consisting of mere facts about ourselves: publications, conferences, subjects taught etc. There are then applications where one is supposed to present their achievements in a descriptive manner. Sometimes one has to do both.

Personally, I am fine with the first type of application (facts). However, being convincingly enthusiastic about my own achievements, which is usually expected in a descriptive type of application, presents for me some difficulties. An example: explaining why some research is ‘ground-breaking’ and ‘fundamental’ for a given discipline belongs to a repertoire of commonplaces of a descriptive application. Although any junior scholar seeks interesting research topics, trying to achieve results as accurate and innovative as possible, one has to admit that ground-breaking character of these achievements isn’t always an obvious thing. Everyone knows that young researchers are still perfecting their research skills while working on some smaller topics. ‘Fundamental’ syntheses are usually written later in one’s career. And even if a graduate student has an exceptional research potential for his age, he still has no financial means to realise it: institutions set limits to funding a young researcher can apply for. This funding is sufficient to conduct a ‘good enough’, interesting project, but not – a ground-breaking project, which usually requires establishing and paying a research team. Ideally, a student should work in a team led by an experienced researcher. In humanities, however, at least in Poland, this kind of situation is still relatively rare.

So the rhetoric of descriptive applications tends sometimes to be at odds with reality. But even if it wasn’t, it would still be psychologically doubtful, especially for those who aren’t keen to flatter themselves openly.

 

'I refuse to award...'

'Scholarship awarded...'