The Intentional Excellent Mind

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The road to achieving your set goals should be an intentional one. No one will live your dreams for your. Take the bull by the horn and make a way for yourself. Intentionality is key to achieving success. We have a scholar in the house who is intentional about his goals and academic excellence. Lets get to meet him.

Welcome to honournaija_blog, can we meet you??

Thank you very much. My name is  Daniel Chukwuemeka Amaogu, I am an  awardee of the prestigious ERASMUS scholarship and I am currently studying Mediterranean Forestry and Natural Resources for my masters program at the university of Leida, Spain. My Bachelors degree was in forestry and wildlife management. I will say I am a product of grace.

Great. What inspired you to seek for scholarship and to study outside Nigeria?

What inspired me to study outside Nigeria is excellence. I wanted excellence so much and diversity. I am someone who seeks to be the best version of myself and what I do. I wanted to receive a world class education. Having finished as the over all best student from the university of Port Harcourt during my undergraduate degree, I just wanted to see myself keep up with the excellence aura. Also, life was not easy for me while growing up and I needed to change the stereotype in my family. All these were my motivation.

Fantastic. Were you rejected?? how did you handle it? share your experience.

Talking about rejection, I will say YES. Rejection is part of the process because the slot for candidates for each scholarship is small and quite competitive too, not everyone will be taken. For me, I will say grace worked for me. I got about four rejections. When I see rejection letters, I usually contact the scholarship body why my application was not successful. This helped me to improve better in my applications. I became very intentional with my application in 2019 and started doing things rightly.

I love your intentionality. How many scholarships did you apply for before hitting the jackpot?

I applied to four scholarships before I got a YES. I applied to Commonwealth, MasterCard and Wageningen excellence program, these are the ones I can remembered which I applied for in 2018. My main target was MEDFOR, I prayed very hard and to the glory of God, I got it.

Did you feel excited after getting one? Share your experience.

Yes, I was excited when I got the congratulatory email. At a point, I was having cold feet as regards sourcing for funds to travel to Spain. Eventually, I was able to get my visa through financial supports from friends. I was very excited when my visa came through.

Nice. From your experience, what are the needful things to be done before securing a scholarship?

My philosophy is that there might not be perfect candidate for the application but doing the needful will single you out. Get your passport and this should be your first target. Get your documents such as certificate, transcripts, recommendation letters etc. Also, prepare yourself adequately for your applications. Get busy, volunteer, engage in internships and all activities related with your course even if you are not paid. Experience is key. Improve your writing and communication skills too. Build yourself too, sometimes your disposition while been interviewed is what will make you stand out during the selection process.

Any platform that students can get scholarships from? please share.

I subscribed to After school.com for scholarships. I get notifications for scholarships that are available. There are scholarships that are available but how to access them is the problem. Join scholarship groups and and maximize LinkedIn platform too.

Studying outside Nigeria, how does it feel?? Stressful, tasking or quite with ease? Share your experience.

I will use my experience. The learning conditions is very fascinating, there is access to everything that you need. Th teaching system is also good and we are allowed to develop ourselves especially through research work. Also, the way we speak our English is quite different but after sometimes, you will be fine. I personally struggled with communicating with people from non English speaking countries.

Thank you sir. What advice will you give to intending scholarship applicants??

Always work hard, pray hard and don’t give up. Believe in yourself always.