Scholarships are Melting my Brain

     I can pick up almost any college magazine and see an inspirational story about how Mr. or Miss Dental-Ad-Smile was able to pay for college using only scholarships. About how they were actually paid to go to college because of all the scholarship money they won, and they had a fabulous time not having to eat Ramen noodles or buy cheap shampoo that makes your hair smell weird. According to Mr. or Miss Dental-Ad-Smile, scholarships are waiting outside your door for you to fall into them. They are waiting on your money tree ripe for the picking, and all you have to do is Google the word "scholarships". Well, I'm here to bust that myth.
     The real truth about scholarships is that, yes, there are hundreds of thousands of them out there. But what Mr. or Miss Dental-Ad-Smile fail to mention is that there are hundreds of millions of students that are angling for those same scholarships. Every time you click on a scholarship title there are at least 67324.39 people that click on it too. And about 82% of those people are in a time zone that is 12 hours ahead of you, so they have 12 hours start in writing that fabulous essay that meets the prompt exactly.
     Speaking of essay prompts, there are two questions that make up the bulk of what you are expected to form a coherent page about. The first one usually asks your opinion about something. Which is fine, considering that most people have opinions. However it is not fine that the question asks your opinion about something that you most likely have never heard of. How do I know what my opinion is on the lifespan of a box turtle? I've never thought about it before. And I don't know that I necessarily have an opinion, either. The second question that is most often asked is about something the company does. The I. M. Poor Foundation wishes you to read the 960-page book on Keynesian economics; then choose one principle to analyze and to discuss how you would apply it today. And the award for the I. M. Poor Foundation comes to a total of $500. It is not renewable.  Not to mention that it takes time to write the perfect essay, and most people are still trying to struggle through the perils of trig, and the subjunctive tense in French.
     Another factor in the scholarship search is that most scholarships are hosted by companies who are looking for a person of Czechoslovakian descent who graduated from a high school in Epsom County of South Dakota, who is pursuing a career in neuroscience and speaks Swahili. Quite.
     So, if you're trying to go to a college that costs $35,000 a year, and they only give you $11,000 a year in aid plus merit scholarships, it looks like you're out of luck. Unless you are able to lock yourself up in a room for the entire summer and come up with 67.2 essays. Or a long-lost uncle who lives in Africa dies of a mysterious illness and leaves you a million dollars he didn't know he had. And then there's always the option of selling one or more of your siblings, which has proven surprisingly lucrative in a number of areas.
Who's ready for bone-crushing debt?