West Campus Foundation For Excellence Annual College Fair And: Fill & Download for Free

If I could, I'd give every college student a copy of the enduring essays "What Are You Going to Do With That?," by William Deresiewicz and "The Case for Breaking Up With Your Parents," by Terry Castle, stay with them until they read both essays completely, and tell them to re-read them on a yearly basis (I do), because I think that's almost all of what they need to hear. Scratch that, I'd pass copies to everyone and anyone:What Are You Going to Do With That?The question my title poses, of course, is the one that is classically aimed at humanities majors. What practical value could there possibly be in studying literature or art or philosophy? So you must be wondering why I'm bothering to raise it here, at Stanford, this renowned citadel of science and technology. What doubt can there be that the world will offer you many opportunities to use your degree?But that's not the question I'm asking. By "do" I don't mean a job, and by "that" I don't mean your major. We are more than our jobs, and education is more than a major. Education is more than college, more even than the totality of your formal schooling, from kindergarten through graduate school. By "What are you going to do," I mean, what kind of life are you going to lead? And by "that," I mean everything in your training, formal and informal, that has brought you to be sitting here today, and everything you're going to be doing for the rest of the time that you're in school.We should start by talking about how you did, in fact, get here. You got here by getting very good at a certain set of skills. Your parents pushed you to excel from the time you were very young. They sent you to good schools, where the encouragement of your teachers and the example of your peers helped push you even harder. Your natural aptitudes were nurtured so that, in addition to excelling in all your subjects, you developed a number of specific interests that you cultivated with particular vigor. You did extracurricular activities, went to afterschool programs, took private lessons. You spent summers doing advanced courses at a local college or attending skill-specific camps and workshops. You worked hard, you paid attention, and you tried your very best. And so you got very good at math, or piano, or lacrosse, or, indeed, several things at once.Now there's nothing wrong with mastering skills, with wanting to do your best and to be the best. What's wrong is what the system leaves out: which is to say, everything else. I don't mean that by choosing to excel in math, say, you are failing to develop your verbal abilities to their fullest extent, or that in addition to focusing on geology, you should also focus on political science, or that while you're learning the piano, you should also be working on the flute. It is the nature of specialization, after all, to be specialized. No, the problem with specialization is that it narrows your attention to the point where all you know about and all you want to know about, and, indeed, all you can know about, is your specialty.The problem with specialization is that it makes you into a specialist. It cuts you off, not only from everything else in the world, but also from everything else in yourself. And of course, as college freshmen, your specialization is only just beginning. In the journey toward the success that you all hope to achieve, you have completed, by getting into Stanford, only the first of many legs. Three more years of college, three or four or five years of law school or medical school or a Ph.D. program, then residencies or postdocs or years as a junior associate. In short, an ever-narrowing funnel of specialization. You go from being a political-science major to being a lawyer to being a corporate attorney to being a corporate attorney focusing on taxation issues in the consumer-products industry. You go from being a biochemistry major to being a doctor to being a cardiologist to being a cardiac surgeon who performs heart-valve replacements.Again, there's nothing wrong with being those things. It's just that, as you get deeper and deeper into the funnel, into the tunnel, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember who you once were. You start to wonder what happened to that person who played piano and lacrosse and sat around with her friends having intense conversations about life and politics and all the things she was learning in her classes. The 19-year-old who could do so many things, and was interested in so many things, has become a 40-year-old who thinks about only one thing. That's why older people are so boring. "Hey, my dad's a smart guy, but all he talks about is money and livers."And there's another problem. Maybe you never really wanted to be a cardiac surgeon in the first place. It just kind of happened. It's easy, the way the system works, to simply go with the flow. I don't mean the work is easy, but the choices are easy. Or rather, the choices sort of make themselves. You go to a place like Stanford because that's what smart kids do. You go to medical school because it's prestigious. You specialize in cardiology because it's lucrative. You do the things that reap the rewards, that make your parents proud, and your teachers pleased, and your friends impressed. From the time you started high school and maybe even junior high, your whole goal was to get into the best college you could, and so now you naturally think about your life in terms of "getting into" whatever's next. "Getting into" is validation; "getting into" is victory. Stanford, then Johns Hopkins medical school, then a residency at the University of San Francisco, and so forth. Or Michigan Law School, or Goldman Sachs, or Mc­Kinsey, or whatever. You take it one step at a time, and the next step always seems to be inevitable.Or maybe you did always want to be a cardiac surgeon. You dreamed about it from the time you were 10 years old, even though you had no idea what it really meant, and you stayed on course for the entire time you were in school. You refused to be enticed from your path by that great experience you had in AP history, or that trip you took to Costa Rica the summer after your junior year in college, or that terrific feeling you got taking care of kids when you did your rotation in pediatrics during your fourth year in medical school.But either way, either because you went with the flow or because you set your course very early, you wake up one day, maybe 20 years later, and you wonder what happened: how you got there, what it all means. Not what it means in the "big picture," whatever that is, but what it means to you. Why you're doing it, what it's all for. It sounds like a cliché, this "waking up one day," but it's called having a midlife crisis, and it happens to people all the time.There is an alternative, however, and it may be one that hasn't occurred to you. Let me try to explain it by telling you a story about one of your peers, and the alternative that hadn't occurred to her. A couple of years ago, I participated in a panel discussion at Harvard that dealt with some of these same matters, and afterward I was contacted by one of the students who had come to the event, a young woman who was writing her senior thesis about Harvard itself, how it instills in its students what she called self-efficacy, the sense that you can do anything you want. Self-efficacy, or, in more familiar terms, self-esteem. There are some kids, she said, who get an A on a test and say, "I got it because it was easy." And there are other kids, the kind with self-efficacy or self-esteem, who get an A on a test and say, "I got it because I'm smart."Again, there's nothing wrong with thinking that you got an A because you're smart. But what that Harvard student didn't realize—and it was really quite a shock to her when I suggested it—is that there is a third alternative. True self-esteem, I proposed, means not caring whether you get an A in the first place. True self-esteem means recognizing, despite everything that your upbringing has trained you to believe about yourself, that the grades you get—and the awards, and the test scores, and the trophies, and the acceptance letters—are not what defines who you are.She also claimed, this young woman, that Harvard students take their sense of self-efficacy out into the world and become, as she put it, "innovative." But when I asked her what she meant by innovative, the only example she could come up with was "being CEO of a Fortune 500." That's not innovative, I told her, that's just successful, and successful according to a very narrow definition of success. True innovation means using your imagination, exercising the capacity to envision new possibilities.But I'm not here to talk about technological innovation, I'm here to talk about a different kind. It's not about inventing a new machine or a new drug. It's about inventing your own life. Not following a path, but making your own path. The kind of imagination I'm talking about is moral imagination. "Moral" meaning not right or wrong, but having to do with making choices. Moral imagination means the capacity to envision new ways to live your life.It means not just going with the flow. It means not just "getting into" whatever school or program comes next. It means figuring out what you want for yourself, not what your parents want, or your peers want, or your school wants, or your society wants. Originating your own values. Thinking your way toward your own definition of success. Not simply accepting the life that you've been handed. Not simply accepting the choices you've been handed. When you walk into Starbucks, you're offered a choice among a latte and a macchiato and an espresso and a few other things, but you can also make another choice. You can turn around and walk out. When you walk into college, you are offered a choice among law and medicine and investment banking and consulting and a few other things, but again, you can also do something else, something that no one has thought of before.Let me give you another counterexample. I wrote an essay a couple of years ago that touched on some of these same points. I said, among other things, that kids at places like Yale or Stanford tend to play it safe and go for the conventional rewards. And one of the most common criticisms I got went like this: What about Teach for America? Lots of kids from elite colleges go and do TFA after they graduate, so therefore I was wrong. TFA, TFA—I heard that over and over again. And Teach for America is undoubtedly a very good thing. But to cite TFA in response to my argument is precisely to miss the point, and to miss it in a way that actually confirms what I'm saying. The problem with TFA—or rather, the problem with the way that TFA has become incorporated into the system—is that it's just become another thing to get into.In terms of its content, Teach for America is completely different from Goldman Sachs or McKinsey or Harvard Medical School or Berkeley Law, but in terms of its place within the structure of elite expectations, of elite choices, it is exactly the same. It's prestigious, it's hard to get into, it's something that you and your parents can brag about, it looks good on your résumé, and most important, it represents a clearly marked path. You don't have to make it up yourself, you don't have to do anything but apply and do the work­—just like college or law school or McKinsey or whatever. It's the Stanford or Harvard of social engagement. It's another hurdle, another badge. It requires aptitude and diligence, but it does not require a single ounce of moral imagination.Moral imagination is hard, and it's hard in a completely different way than the hard things you're used to doing. And not only that, it's not enough. If you're going to invent your own life, if you're going to be truly autonomous, you also need courage: moral courage. The courage to act on your values in the face of what everyone's going to say and do to try to make you change your mind. Because they're not going to like it. Morally courageous individuals tend to make the people around them very uncomfortable. They don't fit in with everybody else's ideas about the way the world is supposed to work, and still worse, they make them feel insecure about the choices that they themselves have made—or failed to make. People don't mind being in prison as long as no one else is free. But stage a jailbreak, and everybody else freaks out.In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce has Stephen Dedalus famously say, about growing up in Ireland in the late 19th century, "When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets."Today there are other nets. One of those nets is a term that I've heard again and again as I've talked with students about these things. That term is "self-indulgent." "Isn't it self-indulgent to try to live the life of the mind when there are so many other things I could be doing with my degree?" "Wouldn't it be self-indulgent to pursue painting after I graduate instead of getting a real job?"These are the kinds of questions that young people find themselves being asked today if they even think about doing something a little bit different. Even worse, the kinds of questions they are made to feel compelled to ask themselves. Many students have spoken to me, as they navigated their senior years, about the pressure they felt from their peers—from their peers—to justify a creative or intellectual life. You're made to feel like you're crazy: crazy to forsake the sure thing, crazy to think it could work, crazy to imagine that you even have a right to try.Think of what we've come to. It is one of the great testaments to the intellectual—and moral, and spiritual—poverty of American society that it makes its most intelligent young people feel like they're being self-indulgent if they pursue their curiosity. You are all told that you're supposed to go to college, but you're also told that you're being "self-indulgent" if you actually want to get an education. Or even worse, give yourself one. As opposed to what? Going into consulting isn't self-indulgent? Going into finance isn't self-indulgent? Going into law, like most of the people who do, in order to make yourself rich, isn't self-indulgent? It's not OK to play music, or write essays, because what good does that really do anyone, but it is OK to work for a hedge fund. It's selfish to pursue your passion, unless it's also going to make you a lot of money, in which case it's not selfish at all.Do you see how absurd this is? But these are the nets that are flung at you, and this is what I mean by the need for courage. And it's a never-ending proc­ess. At that Harvard event two years ago, one person said, about my assertion that college students needed to keep rethinking the decisions they've made about their lives, "We already made our decisions, back in middle school, when we decided to be the kind of high achievers who get into Harvard." And I thought, who wants to live with the decisions that they made when they were 12? Let me put that another way. Who wants to let a 12-year-old decide what they're going to do for the rest of their lives? Or a 19-year-old, for that matter?All you can decide is what you think now, and you need to be prepared to keep making revisions. Because let me be clear. I'm not trying to persuade you all to become writers or musicians. Being a doctor or a lawyer, a scientist or an engineer or an economist—these are all valid and admirable choices. All I'm saying is that you need to think about it, and think about it hard. All I'm asking is that you make your choices for the right reasons. All I'm urging is that you recognize and embrace your moral freedom.And most of all, don't play it safe. Resist the seductions of the cowardly values our society has come to prize so highly: comfort, convenience, security, predictability, control. These, too, are nets. Above all, resist the fear of failure. Yes, you will make mistakes. But they will be your mistakes, not someone else's. And you will survive them, and you will know yourself better for having made them, and you will be a fuller and a stronger person.It's been said—and I'm not sure I agree with this, but it's an idea that's worth taking seriously—that you guys belong to a "postemotional" generation. That you prefer to avoid messy and turbulent and powerful feelings. But I say, don't shy away from the challenging parts of yourself. Don't deny the desires and curiosities, the doubts and dissatisfactions, the joy and the darkness, that might knock you off the path that you have set for yourself. College is just beginning for you, adulthood is just beginning. Open yourself to the possibilities they represent. The world is much larger than you can imagine right now. Which means, you are much larger than you can imagine.The Case for Breaking Up With Your ParentsShall I be ashamed to kill mother?—Aeschylus, The Libation BearersTime: last year. Place: an undergraduate classroom, in the airy, well-wired precincts of Silicon Valley University. (Oops, I mean Sun-Kissed-Google-Apps-University.) I am avoiding the pedagogical business at hand—the class is my annual survey of 18th-century British literature, and it's as rockin' and rollin' as you might imagine, given the subject—in order to probe my students' reactions to a startling and (to me) disturbing article I have just read in the Harvard alumni magazine. The piece, by Craig Lambert, one of the magazine's editors, is entitled "Nonstop: Today's Superhero Undergraduates Do '3000 Things at 150 Percent.'"As the breaking-newsfeed title suggests, the piece, on the face of it, is anecdotal and seemingly light-hearted—a collegiate Ripley's Believe It or Not! about the overscheduled lives of today's Harvard undergraduates. More than ever before, it would appear, these poised, high-achieving, fantastically disciplined students routinely juggle intense academic studies with what can only seem (at least to an older generation) a truly dizzy-making array of extracurricular activities: pre-professional internships, world-class athletics, social and political advocacy, start-up companies, volunteering for nonprofits, research assistantships, peer advising, musical and dramatic performances, podcasts and video-making, and countless other no doubt virtuous (and résumé-building) pursuits. The pace is so relentless, students say, some plan their packed daily schedules down to the minute—i.e., "shower: 7:15-7:20 a.m."; others confess to getting by on two or three hours of sleep a night. Over the past decade, it seems, the average Harvard undergraduate has morphed into a sort of lean, glossy, turbocharged superhamster: Look in the cage and all you see, where the treadmill should be, is a beautiful blur.I am curious if my Stanford students' lives are likewise chockablock. Heads nod yes; deep sighs are expelled; their own lives are similarly crazy. They can barely keep up, they say—particularly given all the texting and tweeting and cellphoning they have to do from hour to hour too. Do they mind? Not hugely, it would seem. True, they are mildly intrigued by Lambert's suggestion that the "explosion of busyness" is a relatively recent historical phenomenon—and that, over the past 10 or 15 years, uncertain economic conditions, plus a new cultural emphasis on marketing oneself to employers, have led to ever more extracurricular add-ons. Yes, they allow: You do have to display your "well-roundedness" once you graduate. Thus the supersize CV's. You'll need, after all, to advertise a catalog of competencies: your diverse interests, original turn of mind, ability to work alone or in a team, time-management skills, enthusiasm, unflappability—not to mention your moral probity, generosity to those less fortunate, lovable "meet cute" quirkiness, and pleasure in the simple things of life, such as synchronized swimming, competitive dental flossing, and Antarctic exploration. "Yes, it can often be frenetic and with an eye toward résumés," one Harvard assistant dean of students observes, "but learning outside the classroom through extracurricular opportunities is a vital part of the undergraduate experience here."Yet such references to the past—truly a foreign country to my students—ultimately leave them unimpressed. They laugh when I tell them that during my own somewhat damp Jurassic-era undergraduate years—spent at a tiny, obscure, formerly Methodist school in the rainy Pacific Northwest between 1971 and 1975—I never engaged in a single activity that might be described as "extracurricular" in the contemporary sense, not, that is, unless you count the little work-study job I had toiling away evenings in the sleepy campus library. What was I doing all day? Studying and going to class, to be sure. Reading books, listening to music, falling in love (or at least imagining it). Eating ramen noodles with peanut butter. But also, I confess, I did a lot of plain old sitting around—if not outright malingering. I've got a box of musty journals to prove it. After all, nobody even exercised in those days. Nor did polyester exist. Once you'd escaped high school and obligatory PE classes—goodbye hirsute Miss Davis; goodbye, ugly cotton middy blouse and gym shorts—you were done with that. We were all so countercultural back then—especially in the Pacific Northwest, where the early 1970s were still the late sixties. The 1860s.The students now regard me with curiosity and vague apprehension. What planet is she from.But I have another question for them. While Lambert, author of "Nonstop," admires the multitasking undergraduates Harvard attracts, he also worries about the intellectual and emotional costs of such all-consuming busyness. In a turn toward gravitas, he quotes the French film director Jean Renoir's observation that "the foundation of all civilization is loitering" and wonders aloud if "unstructured chunks of time" aren't necessary for creative thinking. And while careful to phrase his concerns ever so delicately—this is the Harvard alumni magazine, after all—he seems afraid that one reason today's students are so driven and compulsive is that they have been trained up to it since babyhood: From preschool on, they are accustomed to their parents pushing them ferociously to make use of every spare minute. Contemporary middle-class parents—often themselves highly accomplished professionals—"groom their children for high achievement," he suspects, "in ways that set in motion the culture of scheduled lives and nonstop activity." He quotes a former Harvard dean of student life:This is the play-date generation. ... There was a time when children came home from school and just played randomly with their friends. Or hung around and got bored, and eventually that would lead you on to something. Kids don't get to do that now. Busy parents book them into things constantly—violin lessons, ballet lessons, swimming teams. The kids get the idea that someone will always be structuring their time for them.The current dean of freshmen concurs: "Starting at an earlier age, students feel that their free time should be taken up with purposeful activities. There is less stumbling on things you love ... and more being steered toward pursuits." Some of my students begin to look downright uneasy; some are now listening hard.Such parental involvement can be distasteful, even queasy-making. "Now," writes Lambert, parents "routinely 'help' with assignments, making teachers wonder whose work they are really grading. ... Once, college applicants typically wrote their own applications, including the essays; today, an army of high-paid consultants, coaches, and editors is available to orchestrate and massage the admissions effort." Nor do such parents give up their busybody ways, apparently, once their offspring lands a prized berth at some desired institute of higher learning. Lambert elaborates:Parental engagement even in the lives of college-age children has expanded in ways that would have seemed bizarre in the recent past. (Some colleges have actually created a "dean of parents" position—whether identified as such or not—to deal with them.) The "helicopter parents" who hover over nearly every choice or action of their offspring have given way to "snowplow parents" who determinedly clear a path for their child and shove aside any obstacle they perceive in the way.•Now, as a professor I have had some experiences with "hel­icopter" parents, and were weather patterns on the West Coast slightly more rigorous, I'm sure I would have encountered "snowplow" parents as well. Indelibly etched on my brain, I tell the class, is a phone call I received one winter break from the aggrieved mother of a student to whom I had given a C-minus in a course that fall. The class had been a graduate course, a Ph.D. seminar, no less. The woman's daughter, a first-year Ph.D. student, had spoken nary a word in class, nor had she ever visited during office hours. Her seminar paper had been unimpressive: Indeed it was one of those for which the epithet "gobsmackingly incoherent" might seem to have been invented. Still, the mother lamented, her daughter was distraught; the poor child had done nothing over the break but cry and brood and wander by herself in the woods. I had ruined everybody's Christmas, apparently, so would I not redeem myself by allowing her daughter to rewrite her seminar paper for a higher grade? It was only fair.While startled to get such a call, I confess to being cowed by this direct maternal assault and, against my academic better judgment, said OK. The student did rewrite the essay, and this time I gave it a B. Generous, I thought. (It was better but still largely incomprehensible.) Yet the ink was hardly dry when the mother called again: Why wasn't her cherished daughter receiving an A? She had rewritten the paper! Surely I realized ... etc. One was forced to feign the gruesome sounds of a fatal choking fit just to get off the phone.Did such hands-on parental advocacy—I inquired—trouble my students? My caller obviously represented an extreme instance, but what did they think about the wider phenomenon? Having internalized images of themselves (if only unconsciously) as standard-bearers of parental ambition—or so Lambert's article had it—their peers at Harvard didn't seem particularly shocked or embarrassed by Ma and Pa's lobbying efforts on their behalf. According to one survey, only 5 to 6 percent of undergrads felt their parents had been "too involved" in the admission process. Once matriculated (there's an interesting word), most students saw frequent parental contact and advice-giving as normal: A third of Harvard undergraduates reported calling or messaging daily with a parent.Yet here it was—just at this delicate punctum—that I found myself reduced (however briefly) to speechlessness. Blindsided. So how often do my students—mostly senior English majors, living in residential dorms—text or talk to their parents? Broad smiles all around. Embarrassed looks at one another. Whispers and some excited giggling. A lot. Well, how much exactly? A lot. But what's a lot? They can't believe I'm asking. Why do I want to know? I might as well be asking them how often they masturbate. And then it all comes tumbling out:Oh, like, every day, sometimes more than once.At least two or three times a day. (Group laughter.)My father e-mails me jokes and stuff every day.My mother would worry if I didn't call her every day. (Nodding heads.)Well, we're always in touch—my parents live nearby so I go home weekends, too.Finally, one student—a delightful young woman whom I know to be smart and levelheaded—confesses that she talks to her mother on the cellphone at least five, maybe six, even seven times a day: We're like best friends, so I call her whenever I get out of class. She wants to know about my professors, what was the exam, so I tell her what's going on and give her, you know, updates. Sometimes my grandmother's there, and I talk to her too.I'm stunned; I'm aghast; I'm going gaga. I must look fairly stricken too—Elektra keening over the corpse of Agamemnon—because now the whole class starts laughing at me, their strange unfathomable lady-professor, the one who doesn't own a television and obviously doesn't have any kids of her own. What a freak. "But when I was in school," I manage finally to gasp, "All we wanted to do was get away from our parents!" "We never called our parents!" "We despised our parents!" "In fact," I splutter—and this is the showstopper—"we only had one telephone in our whole dorm—in the hallway—for 50 people! If your parents called, you'd yell from your room, Tell them I'm not here!"After this last outburst, the students too look aghast. Not to mention morally discomfited. No; these happy, busy, optimistic Stanford undergrads, so beautiful and good in their unisex T-shirts, hoodies, and J.Crew shorts; so smart, scrupulous, forward-looking, well-meaning, well-behaved, and utterly presentable—just the best and the nicest, really—simply cannot imagine the harsh and silent world I'm describing.•At the time, I wasn't sure why this conversation left me dumbfounded, but it did. It stayed with me for weeks, and I told numerous pals about it, marveling again at the bizarreness of contemporary undergraduate life. One said she talked to her mother five times a day! In the moment, the exchange had awakened in me a fairly dismal psychological sensation I'd sometimes felt in classes before (one hard to acknowledge, so out of step with official norms does it seem): namely, that teaching makes me feel lonely. Not all the time, but enough to notice. Lecturing before students, I will suddenly feel utterly bereft. A cloud goes over the sun. Though putatively in charge, I'm estranged from my charges—self-conscious, alone, in a tunnel, the object of attention (and somehow responsible for everything taking place) but unable to speak a language anyone understands. I feel sad and oppressed, smothered almost, slightly panicky. It's a sensation one might have in an anxiety dream—the sort in which you feel abandoned and overwhelmed and without something you desperately need. They've gone away and left me in charge of everything. At least in my own head, it's the sensation of orphanhood.One rallies, of course. Professor Freakout soldiers on and the feeling dissipates. The business of the day returns. But the psychological cloud can remain for a while, like a miasma. By asking my students a lot of intrusive and impertinent questions, I concluded afterward, I'd obviously brought this grisly mood on myself. Their charming, fresh-faced, matter-of-fact responses—yes, they were just as busy as their Harvard counterparts, but, yes, they also managed to stay in (surprisingly) close touch with parents (i.e., they loved and were loved in return)—had somehow triggered my orphan-reflex. I had only myself to blame. I chastised myself for having temporarily forgotten that students today—not just those at Harvard or Stanford, of course—live in a new, exciting, exacting "24/7" world, one utterly unlike (mentalité-wise) the one I inhabited as an undergraduate. They seem reasonably content with their lot; in fact appear to take the endless "connectivity" for granted—the networking, blogging, Skyping, Facebook posts, Twitter feeds. And why shouldn't they? Have they ever known anything else? None of it made me happy, but neither was I particularly happy with myself.Now, lest one wonder, I should say upfront I am not an orphan—or at least not in the official sense. At the time of writing, both my parents are still alive—in their mid-80s, but frail, beginning to fail. They don't live together. In fact, despite residing less than a mile apart, they haven't laid eyes on one another for almost 40 years. Not even by accident in the Rite Aid store. Don't ask. They've had five rancorous marriages between them. I haven't seen my father more than 10 or 12 times over the past decade. That my recurrent sense of psychic estrangement—not to say shock at my students' hooked-in, booked-up, seemingly bountiful lives—might be in some way connected with these Jolly Aged P's is a topic that would no doubt require a posse of shrinks to explore thoroughly. But even without reference to private psychodrama, I think I now at least half-grasp the reason why my students' overscheduled lives, so paradoxically conjoined (I felt) with intense bonds with parents, discombobulated me so thoroughly.Unsurprisingly, orphanhood—that painful thing—has everything to do with the case. Orphanhood conceived, that is, in the broadest sense: as a metaphor for modern human experience, as symbol for unhappy consciousness, as emblem of that groundwork—that inaugural experience of metaphysical solitude—that Martin Heidegger deemed necessary for the act of philosophizing. About orphanhood conceived, in other words, as a condition for world-making—as both the sorrow and creative quintessence of life.Now that's a bit of a mouthful, I realize, so let me explain it in simpler terms. If you teach the history of English and American literature (as I've done most of my life), it's safe to say you will end up, among other things, a state-of-the-art Orphan Expert. Not that it's that hard. You don't need to go back very far in literary history, after all, to find a plethora of orphaned or quasi-orphaned protagonists. At the outset of the play bearing his name, Hamlet, poor mite, might best be understood, after all, as a sort of half-orphan—indeed, a half-orphan with an unconscious wish to become a full-service orphan. If not downright matricidal, he seems aggrieved enough by his mother's perceived betrayals to wonder if hastening her demise might not make life at Elsinore Castle rather more enjoyable for everybody concerned.And what is Milton's Paradise Lost if not one of Western culture's great parables of self-orphaning? Along with the Oresteia and the Oedipus plays, it's a sort of poetical primer on how to forfeit the love and care of one's Creator in a few outrageous, easy-to-follow steps. Satan's not really to blame for the mess: He's just a figment, the kid who sticks chewing gum on the table leg. Adam and Eve know perfectly well what they are doing when they eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They want to eat it. And when they are seen, misery-ridden, leaving life in the Garden behind ("They, hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow,/ Through Eden took their solitary way"), they carry with them all the pathos of suddenly abandoned children. They have no mother, presumably, and their Father is dead to them. Worse yet, they are wise orphans; they recognize their own culpability in their loss. Cosmically amplifying their sorrow is the sickening, banal, no-way-back knowledge that they've brought their banishment on themselves. Daddy took the T-Bird away. But we should never have been driving it in the first place.Yet for English speakers, it's in classic Anglo-American fiction—in the novel, say, from Daniel Defoe, Aphra Behn, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding to Dickens, Eliot, Twain, James, Woolf, Hemingway, and the rest—that the orphaned, or semi-orphaned, hero or heroine becomes a central, if not inescapable, fixture. Something about the new social and psychic world in which the realistic novel comes into being in the late 17th and early 18th centuries pushes the orphan to the foreground of the mix, makes of him or her a strikingly necessary figure, a kind of exemplary being. (By "orphan" I likewise include those characters—call them "pseudo-orphans"—who believe themselves to be orphans, but over the course of the narrative discover a mother or father or both.) So memorably have these "one of a kind" characters been drawn, we often know them by a single name or nickname: Moll, Tom, Fanny, Becky, Heathcliff, Jane, Pip, Oliver, Ishmael, Huck, Dorothea, Jude, Isabel, Milly, Lily, Lolly, Sula.Even if you haven't read the books in which these invented beings appear, you've probably heard of them and their stories; may even have a rudimentary sense of what they are like as "people" (self-reliant, footloose, attractive, curious, quick-thinking, lucky, tricky, a mischief-maker, the proverbial black sheep ... and so on). Alarmingly enough, orphaned protagonists appear regularly in stories written explicitly for children: Witness Little Goody Two-Shoes, Pollyanna, Heidi, Little Orphan Annie, Kim, Mowgli, Bilbo, Frodo, Anne (of Green Gables), Dorothy (she of Toto and Auntie Em), Peter (as in Pan), Harry (as in Potter). And needless to say, these parentless juveniles are usually the heroes or heroines of the books in which they appear. They may be wounded or fey or uncanny (what do we make of the vacant circles that Little Orphan Annie has for eyes?), yet they are also resilient, charismatic, oddly powerful.•Thus the first of two big lit-crit hypotheses I'll advance here: More than love, sex, courtship, and marriage; more than inheritance, ambition, rivalry, or disgrace; more than hatred, betrayal, revenge, or death, orphanhood—the absence of the parent, the frightening yet galvanizing solitude of the child—may be the defining fixation of the novel as a genre, what one might call its primordial motive or matrix, the conditioning psychic reality out of which the form itself develops.Now, even though I've made a talking point of it, what's important here is not merely the frequency with which orphaned heroes and heroines appear in fiction since the 18th century. Yes, from Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel onward, the phenomenon has inspired some brilliant commentary. In one of the most profound books on fiction ever written, Adultery in the Novel, Tony Tanner associates the orphan trope with the early novel's tendency toward diagetic instability—its ambiguous, unsettled "ongoingness" and resistance to closure:The novel, in its origin, might almost be said to be a transgressive mode, inasmuch as it seemed to break, or mix, or adulterate the existing genre-expectations of the time. It is not for nothing that many of the protagonists of the early English novels are socially displaced or unplaced figures—orphans, prostitutes, adventurers, etc. They thus represent or incarnate a potentially disruptive or socially unstabilized energy that may threaten, directly or implicitly, the organization of society, whether by the indeterminacy of their origin, the uncertainty of the direction in which they will focus their unbonded energy, or their attitude toward the ties that hold society together and that they may choose to slight or break.Like the Prostitute or Adventurer, the Orphan embodies the new genre's own picaresque "outlaw" dynamism.Precisely because the 18th-century orphan-hero is usually untried, unprotected, disadvantaged (not to mention misinformed or uninformed about his or her parentage), he or she can function as a sort of textual free radical: as plot-catalyst and story-generator—a mixer-upper of things, whose search for a legitimate identity or place in the world of the fiction at once jump-starts the narrative and tends to shunt it away from didacticism and any predictable or programmatic unfolding of events.A flagrant example of such jump-starting occurs in Defoe's Moll Flanders (1722). Here it is precisely the eponymous heroine's putative orphanhood (she knows only that her mother, whom she presumes to be dead, was a thief and gave birth to her in Newgate Prison) that catalyzes, among other scandals, one of the novel's most titillating (if outlandish) episodes: Moll's shocking marriage-by-mistake to her own brother. (Only well into their marriage, after she and her brother have several children, will Moll realize that her chatty mother-in-law, his mother, is also her mother—long ago transported to America, but still alive and flourishing.) Defoe purports to moralize in Moll Flanders—in his Preface he describes his narrative as free of "Lewd Ideas" and "immodest Turns"—a work "from every part of which something may be learned, and some just and religious inference is drawn." Yet bizarrely, through some inscrutable narrative magic, the very mystery in which Moll's birth is shrouded triggers one of the novel's most perverse and sensational incidents. What on earth are we meant to "learn" from it? Don't ever get married, in case your spouse is really your long-lost brother or sister?Yet Moll Flanders also illuminates a perhaps more profound aspect of the orphan narrative: its austere embedding of a certain hard-boiled psychological realism. Even when the hero or heroine recovers a lost parent, that person can shock or mortify. The "orphan mentality" can persist, alas, post-reunion. Thus Moll finds out that, yes, as she's been told, her mother is a raddled old Newgate jailbird, with the livid mark of the branding iron on her hand. Now, for most of us, such a revelation—even barring incestuous ramifications—would be disillusioning, to say the least. Imagine: After years of loneliness, of longing for a tender maternal embrace, you finally, miraculously, locate your birth mother: She turns out to be a convicted felon. A whore. A liar and check-kiter. A crystal-meth addict. No help there; she's way worse off than I am.•Freud famously described the "family romance" as the childhood fantasy that one's parents aren't,in actuality, one's real parents—that one was switched in the cradle, left in a basket on the doorstep, found under a cabbage leaf or the like, and that one's real father and mother are persons of great wealth, beauty, and high station, a king and queen, perhaps, who will someday return to reclaim you and love you in the way you deserve. He thought such fantasies especially likely to develop at the birth of a sibling, when anger at the parents—for introducing a presumably odious rival into the family circle—is at a height. Real parents are disparaged; imagined parents idealized. The scenario in Moll Flanders reads like a sendup of the Freudian romance: almost a spoof on it. It's not simply that the lost-and-found parent turns out to be disappointingly "trashy." She's quite shockingly trashy—sneaky, disingenuous, a terrible old crone with false teeth, sleazier than you even thought possible. But you're stuck with her, it seems, for life, unless you can find a way to write her back out of your story.If one wanted to be fancy, one might dub this familial antiromance the "emotional drama of the post-Enlightenment child." Moll does not cease to be "orphaned" having rediscovered her mother; on the contrary, she abandons her (and the brother-husband), and resumes her solitary adventuring. And while she will re-encounter the brother later—indeed inherit the Virginia plantation he and the mother have established—Moll never sees her mother again. The maternal reappearance alters little or nothing in the heroine's inner world: Psychologically speaking, Moll is as alone at the end of the fiction as she was when she started. She's what you might call a self-orphaner, an orphan by default. Evasive, secretive, deeply intransigent—one of life's permanentorphans.In the broad, even existential, sense of the term I deploy here, orphanhood is not necessarily reducible to orphanhood in the literal sense. At least metaphorically, virtually any character in the early realist novel might be said to be an orphan—including, paradoxically, many of those heroes and heroines who have a living parent (or two), or end up getting one, as Moll Flanders does. A feeling of intractable loneliness—of absolute moral or spiritual estrangement from the group—may be all that it takes. You don't need to have been abandoned by a parent in the conventional sense, in other words, to feel psychically bereft.Indeed, from a certain angle—and thus my second big lit-crit hypothesis—the orphan trope may allegorize a far more disturbing emotional reality in early fiction: a generic insistence on the reactionary (and destructive) nature of parent/child ties. The more one reads, the more one confronts it: Whatever their status in a narrative (alive, dead, absent, present, lost, found), the parental figures in the early English novel are, in toto, so deeply and overwhelmingly flawed—so cruel, lost, ignorant, greedy, compromised, helpless, selfish, morally absent, or tragically oblivious to their children's needs—one would be better off without them. You might as well be an orphan.Julia Kristeva remarks somewhere (my wording may not be exact) that "in every bourgeois family group there is one child who has a soul." And thus we meet them, in novel after novel: not only those who go literally motherless and fatherless, but also the children "with souls" who, for precisely that reason, will be persecuted by their foolish parents or parental stand-ins; ostracized, abused, made to submit to some hellish moral and spiritual reaming-out. Ruthlessly, imperviously, the realistic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries compulsively foreground this "orphaning" of the psyche; shape it into parable, and in so doing (I think) dramatize the painful birth of the modern subject—that radically deracinated being, vital yet alone, who goes undefined by kinship, caste, class, or visible membership in a group.Witness, for example, the predicament of the eponymous heroine at the outset of Samuel Richardson's august and appalling masterwork, Clarissa. (Published in 1748, Clarissa, for those of you who haven't read it, is the greatest novel ever written in any language.) Now although the young and virtuous Clarissa Harlowe has grown up, presumably happily, at Harlowe-Place surrounded by her "friends"—i.e., both of her parents, two siblings, and several uncles—as the novel opens, she's just been "orphaned" in the emotional sense: profoundly, inexplicably, and shatteringly rejected. (Ironically, the word "friend" in the 18th century can not only mean someone outside the family circle whom one likes or loves, but also a member, simply, of one's immediate family circle.) When Clarissa refuses to marry the man of her father's choice, a rich and grasping Gollum-like creature named Solmes (one always imagines him with webbed feet), her "friends" morph abruptly, and nightmarishly, into domestic dungeon-masters. They revile Clarissa and threaten to disown her; they lock her up in her room for days and refuse to see her or read her letters; they forbid her contact with anyone who might help her; her father curses her. As they prepare to marry her off to Solmes "by force," she seems ever more like one of the victim-children in fairy tales, the designated family sacrifice.Now Richardson critics over the past few decades have tended to skate past these terrifying opening scenes in order to concentrate on Clarissa's sufferings later at the hands of Lovelace, the charming sociopath and would-be rescuer who seduces her. Yes, Lovelace's depredations later are spectacular and obscene—he kidnaps her, drugs her, rapes her while she is drugged, and ultimately hounds her to death. Yet even before Lovelace enters the novel (or so I have always felt), Richardson has already saturated the novelistic mise-en-scène with an even more unnerving and absolute kind of horror. "Home" is the primordial horror-show in this novel—a place of dehumanization and soul-murder from which the child, to save herself, must somehow escape. Count the Harlowes, likewise, among the ghastliest fictional parents outside Greek tragedy—all the more so because they speak the language of sentimental bourgeois feeling. Even as they subject their daughter to unspeakable torments, they "love" Clarissa, they say; that is why she must be so brutally forced to obey.Yet one finds these dire mamas and papas everywhere in early fiction—even comic fiction. They are omnipresent in works by Fielding, Smollett, Burney, Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, and Ann Radcliffe. Even Jane Austen, arguably, offers an indictment of parents as harsh as that in the Gothic fiction of Shelley or Radcliffe. Witness the foolish, manipulative, greedy, or otherwise profoundly unsatisfactory mothers and fathers in Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion. Austen typically veils the inadequacy, even malice, of her fictional parent-figures by festooning them with comic trappings: We laugh at the absurd Mrs. Bennet, the whinging Mr. Woodhouse, even the monstrous Sir Walter Elliot—the vain, pomaded, rank-obsessed father of Anne Elliot, heroine of Persuasion. (Mothers are often long-dead in Austen, and as in many other works by women from the period, the heroine is obliged to live with a cold, oppressive, or dissociated father.)In real life, having any of these narcissistic nongrown-ups for a parent would be a nightmare come true. They induce bewilderment and a sense of genetic incommensurability. How can Emma—brilliant, coruscating, kind—be the child of the dull, mewling, psychotically self-centered Mr. Woodhouse? Austen's heroines, in particular, are often especially changeling-like—sleek, witty, perceptive misfits, who appear oddly unintegrated into whatever (usually reduced) version of the family unit the novelist has devised for them.What to do with the parents who fail us so abysmally? Perhaps the most drastic solution is to imagine a fictional world from which parents have simply been erased—psychically blanked out—absolutely, and long in advance of any narrative unfurling. Charlotte Brontë's books are a terrifying case in point. They project worlds in which estrangement, loss, and silence about the past seem the precondition for narrative itself. Brontë omits the "back story"—or provides only a fatally impoverished one. Neither of her best-known narrators, Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, has a living father or mother: Jane's parents have died of typhus; of Lucy's we know nothing at all. Both heroines seem to emerge out of, and continually slip back into, an amorphous, staggering, irrevocable loneliness. One senses in their aphasia about the past some suppressed horror. Reading Lucy's glassy-eyed narrative, in particular, is like listening to someone who's had a head injury, or suffers from post-traumatic amnesia.We quickly learn not to expect any answers; some submerged trauma is itself the given, the starting point. Crucial information will never be forthcoming. For these are orphan-tales, drawing us, ineluctably, into a domain of emptiness and pain. Yes, Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe may know their own names—first and last both. (Many fictional orphans don't.) But, affectively speaking, everything else has gone blank. The system crashed long ago. Not only have they no parent or guardian to point to, they seem to have no idea—emotionally, spiritually—what words like "mother" and "father" might mean.•So what—you may be wondering—has all this gloomy business to do with my frantic, ambitious, madly multi-tasking students? With helicopter Moms and Dads? With so-called Velcro parents? The ones who keep messaging 24/7? Surely I don't wish to link all the ultra-depressing things one encounters in literature—O, the horror, the horror, etc.—with the banal, addictive, anodyne back-and-forth of contemporary student life? Hello, you have 193 new messages. Checking for software updates. Your start-up disk is almost full. Hey, it's Mom. I was just wondering if you'd had time yet to. ...Or do I?My answer must be both circumspect and speculative. I don't wish, on the one hand, to sound like someone nostalgic for pain—a relic, a loneliness-junkie, a cheerleader for real-world orphanhood, or (when you get right down to it) a proponent of Orestes-style matricide or patricide. (Not usually, anyway.) On the other hand, I can't help but wonder if we haven't lost the thread when it comes to understanding part of what a "higher education" ideally should entail. Pious college officials yammer on about the need for students to develop something they (the officials) call "critical thinking" and thereby gain intellectual autonomy: a foothold on adulthood. But I'm wondering if it isn't time to reaffirm an idea that "critical thinking" begins at home, or better, withhome—which is to say, that each of us at some point needs to think (dispassionately, daringly) about the "homes" from which we emerge and what we really think of them.Do you owe your parents your obedience? Your deference? Your love? Your phone calls? The questions sound harsh because they are. But our Skype-ridden times may require a certain harshness.Some of the primal myths of our culture—as the greatest artists and writers have always intuited—seem to authorize violence, real or emotional, between the human generations. Francisco Goya's sublime and horrific masterpiece, "Saturn Devouring His Son" (ca. 1819-23), depicts a shocking event in Greek mythology—the cannibalistic murder by the primeval Titan god Kronos (Saturn, in the Roman version) of one of his children. Having received a prophecy that he will be overthrown by one of his own offspring, Kronos devours each of his five children at birth. His wife Ops manages to save their sixth child, Zeus, only by hiding him away on Crete and feeding Kronos a stone in swaddling clothes in place of the newborn. Kronos is fooled and later, this same Zeus, father of the new Olympian gods, overthrows his father, as predicted.An image to shock and awe, undoubtedly, but also one of the great paintings made in that period we call the Enlightenment: that revolutionary era (say, roughly, 1660-1820) during which—for better or for worse—Western culture began to shake off some of the more baleful and stultifying aspects of the Judeo-Christian past and reimagine itself as "modern."The central insight of the period? It's so familiar to us, perhaps, that we have lost sight of its momentousness: that individual human beings are endowed with critical faculties and powers of moral discernment, and as a result, have a right, if not the obligation, to challenge oppressive, unjust, and degrading patterns of authority. Over the course of the 18th century and into the 19th, more and more educated men (and a few brave women) felt intellectually empowered enough to criticize previously sacrosanct "received ideas": traditional religious beliefs, established forms of government, accepted modes of social, legal, and economic organization, the conventional dynamics of family life, relations between men and women, adults and children—all those cognitive grids through which we customarily make sense of the world.At its most potent, the critique was severe—world-changing. A host of Enlightenment freethinkers—Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Hume, Mary Wollstonecraft, Adam Smith—articulated it in passionate and various ways: that the venerable cognitive models human beings had mobilized over the centuries to explain "the nature of things" were often nothing more than self-reinforcing and barbaric "superstition." Taken for dogma, these man-made belief systems had produced a host of ills: savage religious and political strife, the commercial exploitation of the many by the few, the enslavement and genocidal killing of masses of people, the degradation of women, children, animals, and the natural world—century upon century, in fact, of unfathomable global suffering.In his iconic essay of 1784, "What is Enlightenment?" Immanuel Kant put it thus:Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!Not that Kant imagined any cultural enlightenment to be easy or bloodless—especially given the seemingly intractable human proclivity for business as usual:Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of men, even when nature has long emancipated them from alien guidance, nevertheless gladly remain immature for life. For the same reasons, it is all too easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so convenient to be immature! If I have a book to have understanding in place of me, a spiritual adviser to have a conscience for me, a doctor to judge my diet for me, and so on, I need not make any efforts at all. I need not think, so long as I can pay; others will soon enough take the tiresome job over for me.I confess: I first read those words over 25 years ago, and they have never ceased to thrill me.I understand the orphan-narratives of literature the same way I do Goya's painting and Kant's exhortation: as imaginative vehicles designed to shock us into "critical thinking" about those Titan figures we call our parents, and the larger psychosocial forces they so often (wittingly or unwittingly) represent. The intimate authority of parents is, after all, the first kind of authority most of us experience; the parental command the first utterance we recognize as that which must be obeyed. Pain and suffering, we soon learn, will result from our disobedience.And soon enough, most of us become adept at shaping our wishes according to a system of superimposed demands. We learn as young children to control the way we eat, drink, and eliminate waste; we learn to clean our own bodies; we learn under what circumstances it is appropriate to yell or scream or cry, and when we must be silent. Later on, "adult" society will impose further, ever more complex demands. Thus we internalize all those second-order codes of behavior associated with the educational, political, religious, and economic domains within which we all attempt to function, with lesser or greater success.Yet might it not be the case that true advances in human culture—the real leaps in collective understanding—typically result from some maverick individual action—some fundamentaldisobedience on the part of the individual subject? Such maverick actions often disturb—precisely because they need to get our attention. We have to be jolted out of complacency. The greatest artists invariably disrupt and disturb in this way. Like many of the novelists I've been describing, Goya gives us a shocking scene of intergenerational violence—but he does so, precisely, I wager, to force us to confront some of the deepest and hardest feelings we have—about parental authority and its rightful scope, about family violence, about the power of the old over the young, about the role of paternalism in society and government, about whether or not, indeed, those people we designate as "fathers" (priests, doctors, political leaders, scientists) or "mothers" (nurturers, apple-pie makers, self-sacrificing soccer moms, iPhone FaceTime partners, Mama Grizzlies, Tiger Mothers) really Know Best, about whether it is incumbent upon us to exert ourselves against them.You don't have to be a professor, I think, to see Goya as a radical naysayer—a human being horrified by a certain bestial and soul-destroying kind of parental authority. The focus in the "Saturn" painting is on paternal despotism; but elsewhere in Goya's oeuvre we find, too, a frightful bevy of murderous mothers—notably in Los Caprichos (1799), a suite of fantasy-engravings depicting monstrous witches, crones, goats, and owls engaged in child-torture of different sorts. The questions Goya raises remain awful and unremitting, more than 200 years later. Is the rule of life eat or be eaten, even if what you consume is your own child? (One of the most terrible things about "Saturn Devouring His Son" is surely the fact that the headless, half-eaten "child" has the proportions not of a newborn infant, but of an adult human being.) Should we resist our creator's authority? When and how and why? Or should we let ourselves be murdered in his name? When and how and why?Such questions lie at the heart of great literature too. What the early novel dramatizes, it seems to me, is nothing less than a radical transformation in human consciousness—the formation of a new idea. For better or worse, the ferocious, liberating notion embedded in the early novel is that parents are there to be fooled and defied (especially in matters of love, sex, and erotic fulfillment); that even the most venerated traditions exist to be broken with; that creative power is rightly vested in the individual rather than groups, in the young rather than the old; that thought is free. The assertion of individual rights ineluctably begins, symbolically and every other way, with the primal rebellion of the child against parent.So where are we today? Are we in the midst of some countertransformation? A rolling back of the Enlightenment parent-child story? Are we returning to an older model of belief—to a more authoritarian and "elder centric" world? The deferential-child model has dominated most of human history, after all. Maybe the extraordinary Enlightenment break with the age-old commandment—honor thy father and thy mother—was temporary, an aberration, a blip on the screen.My own view remains predictably twisty, fraught, and disloyal. Parents, in my opinion, have to be finessed, thought around, even as we love them: They are so colossally wrong about so many important things. And even when they are not, paradoxically, even when they are 100 percent right, the imperative remains the same: To live an "adult" life, a meaningful life, it is necessary, I would argue, to engage in a kind of symbolic self-orphaning. The process will be different for every person. I have my own inspirational cast of characters in this regard, a set of willful, heroic self-orphaners, past and present, whom I continue to revere: Mozart, the musical child prodigy who successfully rebelled against his insanely grasping and narcissistic father (Leopold Moz­art), who for years shopped him around the courts of Europe as a sort of family cash cow; Sigmund Freud, who, by way of unflinching self-analysis, discovered that it was possible to love and hate something or someone at one and the same time (mothers and fathers included) and that such painfully "mixed emotion" was also inescapably human; Virginia Woolf, who in spite of childhood loss, mental illness, and an acute sense of the sex-prejudice she saw everywhere around her, not only forged a life as a great modernist writer, but made her life an incorrigibly honest and vulnerable one.In a journal entry from 1928 collected in A Writer's Diary, Woolf wrote the following (long after his death) about her brilliant, troubled, well-meaning, tyrannical, depressive, enormously distinguished father—Sir Leslie Stephen, model for Mr. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse and one of the great English "men of letters" of the 19th century:Father's birthday. He would have been 96, 96, yes, today; and could have been 96, like other people one had known: but mercifully was not. His life would have entirely ended mine. What would have happened? No writing, no books—inconceivable. ...The sentimental pathology of the American middle-class family—not to mention the mind-warping digitalization of everyday life—usually militates against such ruthless candor. But what the Life of the Orphan teaches—has taught me at least—is that it is indeed the self-conscious abrogation of one's inheritance, the "making strange" of received ideas, the cultivation of a willingness to defy, debunk, or just plain old disappoint one's parents, that is the absolute precondition, now more than ever, for intellectual and emotional freedom.

The question itself is incorrect, the answer to the question on where to live permanently is different for each individual in the world. An outgoing person and adventurous person would like to stay out enjoy and experience life every second of every day, I am such a person. Shimla is such a places where you can visit a lot of places such as :-The Mall: The Mall is the main shopping street of Shimla. It also has many restaurants, clubs, banks, bars, post offices and tourist offices. The Gaiety Theatre is also situated there.Christ Church: Situated on the Ridge, Christ Church is the second oldest church in Northern India. It has a very majestic appearance and inside there are stained glass windows which represent faith, hope, charity, fortitude, patience and humility.Jakhu Hill: 2 km from Shimla, at a height of 8,000 ft, Jakhu Hill is the highest peak an offers a beautiful view of the town and of the snow-covered Himalayas. At the top of the hill, is an old temple of Lord Hanuman, which is also the home of countless playful monkeys waiting to be fed by all visitors. A 108 feet (33 metre) statue of LordHanuman, a Hindu deity, at 8,500 feet (2,591 metres) above sea level, is single statue to stand at the highest altitude among several other master pieces in the world, overtaking the Christ Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[55]Jutogh: Located just 8 km away from the city centre, this army cantonment is near Totu, an important suburb of Shimla city.Shimla State Museum: The museum, which was opened in 1974, has tried to protect hill-out and the cultural wealth of the state. There is a collection of miniature Pahari paintings, sculptures, bronzes wood-carvings and also costumes, textiles and jewellery of the region.Indian Institute of Advanced Study: This institute is housed at the former Viceregal Lodge, built in 1884-88.Summer Hill: Situated at a distance of 5 km from the Ridge is the lovely township of Summer Hill, at a height of 6,500 ft on the Shimla-Kalka railway line. Mahatma Gandhi lived in these quiet surroundings during his visits to Shimla. Himachal Pradesh University is situated here.Annandale: Developed as the racecourse of Shimla, Annandale is 2–4 km from the Ridge at a height of 6,117 ft. It is a very big beautiful ground, now used by the Indian Army.Tara Devi: 11 km from the Shimla bus-stand. Tara Devi Hill has a temple dedicated to the goddess of stars on top of the hill. There is a military Dairy Town here as well as the headquarters of Bharat Scouts and Guides.Sankat Mochan: A very famous Lord Hanuman temple is located here.Junga: Junga is near Tehsi, 26 km from Shimla. Its original name (with diacritics) is Jūnga and is a former royal retreat of the princely state of Keonthal. It is also known as the Keonthal Estate.Anand Vilas: Midway between Shimla and Junga. "Sarva Dharma Mandir", Temple of all faiths, is a spiritual group dedicated to Mother Nature. Thousands of visitors and devotees come here every year. There is an "Art is Values" school with pupils from all over India. Classes are provided free of cost.Mashobra: 13 km from Shimla, site of the annual Sipi fair in June.Kufri: 16 km from Shimla at a height of 8,600 ft, Kufri is the local winter sports centre, and it also has a small zoo.Naldehra: 22 km from Shimla, with a nine-hole Naldehra Golf Club. The annual Sipi fair in June is held in Naldehra.Chail: Chail was built as summer retreat by the Maharaja of Patiala during the British Raj, it is known for its cricket pitch, the highest in the world.Tattapani: Location of sulphur springs which are found near the Tatapani mandir (holy temple)BUT, these places are one time visits, visiting these places multiple times is not fruitful for a person who always needs something new.A place like Nainital has a variety of places in and out of the city to visit and live in, places such as:-Bhimtal: 22km way from Nainital lies Bhimtal is named after Bhim, one of the five Pandavas. The lake of Bhimtal is named after Bhim, one of the five Pandavas. The lake at Bhimtal is bigger than Nainital lake. Boating, Swimming, Canoeing, Trekking, Paragliding are the main tourist attractions. An aquarium is located on an island at the center of the lake which is quite famous among the tourists,Jeolikot: 18km from Nainital is on Nainital Haldwani Highway. A health resort and is an excellent spot for those who are interested in floriculture and butterfly catching. The beekeeping center is an added attraction.Naukhuchiatal: 30 km away from Nainital and 4 km from Bhimtal, lies Nakuchiyatal, which means the lake with nine corners. Bounded by dark woody forests, and lush greenery, Nakuchiyatal remains a place where nature is given preference over man. Famous for its boat rides, it offers some of the best scenic vistas of the sparkling bluish water lake and its delightful environment.Sataal: Located 45km from Nainital, Sattal, perched at an altitude of 1370 metres. ‘Sattal’ means ‘seven lakes’. Interestingly, three of these lakes are named Ram tal, Lakshman tal, Sita tal and other are Bharat tal, Hanuman tal, Naldamyanti tal, Gurad tal. TheseIt seven interconnected lakes are surrounded by tall oak and pine trees, and this ecosystem is ideal for bird watchers and adventure enthusiasts. The green mountain ranges and sparkling greenish water reflect nature gloriously in all its bounty.Ramgarh: Ramgarh, also known as the fruit bowl of Kumaun is divided into two part Talla(Down) Ramgarh and Malla (Ramgarh).The other very famous thing about Ramgarh are the orchards which provide you with one of the best apples, pears, and peaches. It has a history of hosting poets, writers, and artist who come to the hills seeking inspiration.Mukteshwar: At a distance of 47km lies Mukteshwar is a stunning place nestled between the dense conifers and fruit Orchards and is situated 2,286 meters above sea level. Mukteshwar offers 180-degrees view of the Himalayan Ranges. One can see the peaks of Nanda Devi, Nanda Ghunti, Nandakot, Trishul, and Panchachuli. It is an important hill station in Kumaon.Kainchi Dham: Situated at 17km from Nainital is this Small Ashram Compound where Maharaji spent much of his later years.Kaichi Dham had its share of the limelight when in a candid interview, Mark Zuckerberg revealed to the Prime Minister, that he had visited a temple in India on the advice of Steve JobsCorbett National Park: Located at a distance of 66km, was later named after Jim Corbett, who was a wildlife conservationist, and had played a crucial role in the establishment of the park. Apart from the park the Corbett Museum and Corbett waterfall are major attractions of the place. Jim Corbett National Park a major crowd puller in the region. It was in 1936 when it was established as Hailey National Park , to protect the endangered tiger. The name was later changed after Jim Corbett, who was a wildlife conservationist, and had played a crucial role in the establishment of the park. Apart from the park the Corbett Museum and Corbett waterfall are major attractions of the place.Being a major lover of nature with a huge interest in photography, this place appeals to me more than Shimla.As I have never been to Ooty, I can't say much about it, but after some research on the net, I would not want to stay there. However beautiful it might be, there are limited number of places one can visit such as:-Gardens and parksThe Government Botanical GardenThe Government rose garden (formerly Centenary Rose Park) is the largest rose garden in India.It is situated on the slopes of the Elk Hill in Vijayanagaram of Ooty town in Tamil Nadu, Indiaat an altitude of 2200 meters. Today this garden has one of the largest collection of roses in the country with more than 20,000 varieties of roses of 2,800 cultivars.The collection include hybrid tea roses, Miniature Roses, Polyanthas, Papagena, Floribunda, Ramblers, Yakimour and roses of unusual colours like black and green.The 22-acre (89,000 m2) Ooty Botanical Gardens was laid out in 1847and is maintained by the Government of Tamil Nadu. The Botanical Garden is lush, green, and well-maintained. A flower show along with an exhibition of rare plant species is held every May. The gardens have around a thousand species, both exotic and indigenous, ofplants, shrubs, ferns, trees, herbal and bonsai plants.The garden has a 20-million-year-old fossilized tree.Deer Park is located on the edge of Ooty Lake. It is considered as one of the high altitude zoo in India aside from the zoo in Nainital, Uttarakhand. This park was formed to house a number of species of deer and animals for travellers to view.Lakes and damsOoty LakeOoty lake covers an area of 65 acres.The boat house established alongside the lake, which offers boating facilities to tourists, is a major tourist attraction in Ooty. It was constructed in 1824 by John Sullivan, the first collector of Ooty. The lake was formed by damming the mountain streams flowing down Ooty valley.The lake is set among groves of Eucalyptus trees with a railway line running along one bank. During summer season in May, boat races and boat pageantry are organised for two days at the lake.Pykara is a river located 19 km from Ooty.The Pykara is considered very sacred by the Todas.The Pykara river rises at Mukurthi peak and passes through hilly tract, generally keeping to North and turns to West after reaching the Plateau's edge.The river flows through a series of cascades; and the last two falls of 55 meters and 61 meters are known as Pykara falls.The falls are approximately 6 km from the bridge on the main road. A boat house by the Pykara falls and dam is added attractions to the tourists.Kamaraj Sagar Dam (also known as Sandynalla reservoir)is located at a distance of 10 km from the Ooty bus stand.It is a picnic spot and a film shooting spot on the slopes of the Wenlock Downs.The various tourist activities the dam include fishing and studying nature and environment.Parsons Valley Reservoir is the primary water source for the town and is mainly in a reserved forest and is thus largely off-limits to visitors. Emerald Lake, Avalanche Lake and Porthimund Lake are other lakes in the region.Reserve forestsMukurthi National ParkDoddabetta is the highest peak (2,623 m) in the Nilgiris, about 10 km from Ooty. It lies at the junction of the Western and Eastern Ghats surrounded by dense Sholas. Pine forests situated between Ooty and Thalakunda is a small downhill region where pine trees are arranged in an orderly fashion. Wenlock Downs is a grassland area typical of the original bioscape of the Nilgiris with gently undulating hills. Mudumalai National Park and tiger reserve lies on the north western side of the Nilgiri Hills.The sanctuary is divided into 5 ranges - Masinagudi, Thepakadu, Mudumalai, Kargudi and Nellakota. Here one can often spot herds of endangered Indian elephants, vulnerable gaur, andchital. The sanctuary is a haven for Bengal tigersand Indian leopards and other threatened species.There are at least 266 species of birds in the sanctuary, includingcritically endangered species like the Indian white-rumped vulture and the long-billed vulture.Mukurthi National Park is a 78.46 km2 protected area located in the south-eastern corner of the Nilgiris Plateau west of Ooty. The park was created to protect its keystone species, the Nilgiri tahr.The Western Ghats, Nilgiri Sub-Cluster (6,000 km)(2,300 sq mi)), including all of Mudumalai National Park, is under consideration by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee for selection as a World Heritage Site.Tribal huts and museumToda HutThere are a few Toda huts on the hills above Botanical Garden, where Todas still dwell. There are other Toda settlements in the area, notably Kandal Mund near Old Ooty. Although many Toda have abandoned their traditional distinctive huts for concrete houses,a movement is now afoot to build tradition barrel-vaulted huts and during the last decade forty new huts have been built and many Toda sacred dairies renovated.The Tribal Museum is part of the campus of Tribal Research Centre which is in Muthorai Palada (10 km from Ooty town). It is home to rare artefacts and photographs of tribal groups of Tamil Nadu as well as Andaman and Nicobar Islands and anthropological and archaeological primitive human culture and heritage. The Tribal Museum also displays houses belonging to Toda, Kota, Paniya, Kurumba and Kanikarans.Nilgiri Mountain RailwayThe Nilgiri Mountain Railway was built by the British in 1908,and was initially operated by the Madras Railway Company. The railway still relies on its fleet of steam locomotives.NMR comes under the jurisdiction of the newly formed Salem Division. In July 2005, UNESCO added the Nilgiri Mountain Railway as an extension to the World Heritage Site of Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, the site then became known as "Mountain Railways of India."after it satisfied the necessary criteria, thus forcing abandonment of the modernisation plans. For the past several years diesel locomotives have taken over from steam on the section between Coonoor and Udhagamandalam. Local people and tourists have led a demand for steam locos to once again haul this section.Historical buildingsFernhills palaceStone House is the first bungalow constructed in Ooty. It was built by John Sullivan and was called as Kal Bangala by the tribals (Kal means stone in local tribal language). John Sullivan started building Stone House in 1822, acquiring land from the Todas at one rupee an acre.Today, it is the official residence for the principal of the Government Arts College, OotySt. Stephen's Church is located on the road to Mysore in Ooty, in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. It is one of the oldest churches in the Nilgiris district.The church dates back to the 19th century. Stephen Rumbold Lushington, the then governor of Madras, who keenly felt the need for a cathedral exclusively for the British, in Ooty, laid the foundation for the church on 23 April 1829, to coincide with the birthday of King George IV. St. Stephen's Church was consecrated by John Matthias Turner, Bishop of Calcutta, on 5 November 1830. It was thrown open to public communion on Easter Sunday 3 April 1831. It came under the Church of South India in 1947.The architect in charge was John James Underwood, Captain, Madras Regiment.The places near Mussorie are beautiful and the place itself is beautiful too.This would be my second choice of place to live. With a variety of locations around it, it has enough places of interest to me.Nahata Estate Previously known as "Childer's Lodge" is a huge property of more than 300 acres, owned by the Harakh Chand Nahata family. It is the highest peak of Mussoorie near Lal Tibba, it is situated at 5 km from the Tourist Office and one can go on horse back or on foot. The view of snow-clad mountains is exhilarating.GunHill Second highest point of Mussoorie, at an altitude of 2024m located at 30.4953°N 78.0745°EKempty Falls The Kempty Falls are situated on the hilly tracks of Uttarakhand, India, 15 km from Mussoorie on the Chakrata Road. This place is located nearly 1364 meters above sea level at 78°-02’East longitude and 30° -29’North latitude.Lake Mist About 5 km before Kempty Falls on the Mussoorie-Kempty road is a good picnic spot with accommodation and restaurant facilities; boating is also available. With the Kempty river flowing through it, Lake Mist has many small waterfalls made by the river.Municipal Garden Is a picnic spot having a garden and an artificial mini lake with paddle boating facility. It is located at a distance of 4 km by rickshaw cycles, pony or by a car and 2 km via Waverly Convent School road on foot.Mussoorie Lake A newly developed picnic spot build by City Board & Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority, is situated at 6 km on Mussoorie-Dehradun road having a facility of pedaled boats. It offers a view of Doon Valley and nearby villages.A honeymooning couple find some romantic moments on top of Gunhill, MussourieBhatta Falls 7 km from Mussoorie on Mussoorie-Dehradun Road near Bhatta Village. Accessible by car or bus up to Bhatta from where the fall is 3 km by foot. A fall with different ponds for bathing and water amusements, an ideal place for a picnic.Jharipani Fall Located at 8.5 km from Mussoorie on Mussoorie-Jharipani road. One can go by local bus or car up to Jharipani from where the fall is about 1.5 km on foot.Mossy Fall The fall is surrounded by a dense forest and is 7 km from Mussoorie. One can go there via Barlowganj or Balahisar.Sir George Everest's House Park Estate is where one can find the remains of the building and laboratory of Sir George Everest, the Surveyor-General of India from 1830 to 1843. It is after George Everest that the world's highest peak Mt. Everest is named.It is 6 km from Gandhi Chowk / Library Bazaar and is accessible by vehicle, although the road is very rough beyond Haathi Paon. The place provides a view of Doon Valley on one side and a panoramic view of the Aglar River valley and the snow peaks of the Himalayan ranges on the other. It is a scenic walk from Library Bazaar, and a picnic spot.Nag Devta Temple An ancient temple dedicated to Snake God Lord Shiva and is situated on Cart Mackenzie Road about 6 km from Mussoorie on the way to Dehradun. Vehicles can go right up to the temple. This place provides an enchanting view of Mussoorie and the Doon Valley.Mussoorie and Landour, 1860sJwalaji Temple (Benog Hill) Situated at an altitude of 2240 m, this temple is 9 km west of Mussoorie. It is situated on the top of Benog Tibba (Hill) and contains an old idol of Goddess Durga. There is a view of the Aglar River valley. It cannot be accessed by vehicle although a motor road goes most of the way from Mussoorie.Cloud End This hotel is surrounded by thick deodar forest. The bungalow, built in 1838 by a British major, was one of the first four buildings of Mussoorie and has now been converted into a hotel. The place provides peace and calm and is full of flora and fauna.Van Chetna Kendra 11 km to the South of library point lies an old sanctuary established in 1993 and covering an area of 339 hectares. It is famous for the extinct bird species Mountain Quail (Pahari Bater), which was last spotted in 1876.Mussoorie is a popular destination for honeymooning couples, mainly because of its relatively cool climes and calm and lovely environment.Other than places to visit, the point of living in a place becomes mundane, because the other things are basic necessities are education, housing, medical care, law and order and during this time and age in the above places, this is pretty common and standard. Education can be done from the house of your choice anytime.For me,NainitalMussorieShimlaOotyWould be my list of places rankwise among the following options.

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The Reach Cambridge Scholarship Essay Competition is designed for academically excellent high school students aged between 14 and 18 who would otherwise not be able to attend our summer programs. First prize is 100% of the program fee for our 3-week Program 1 (Explorer) in 2017 (for a maximum of 2 students). Second prize is 100% of the program fee for either our two-week Program 2 (Leader) or two week Program 3 (Scholar) in 2017 (awarded to a maximum of 3 students). For more information, please check: reachcambridge.com/scholarship-essay-competitionChalmers Mexican Student ChallengeMexican students can win a travel grant a for a trip to Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden! Develop environmentally sustainable solutions for Mexico's urban areas and get the chance to travel to Sweden with Chalmers University of Technology. Must be Mexican Citizens with a Bachelor's Degree in Science/ Engineering /Architecture. Studies may be ongoing or completed. Please see website for more details.Travel Grant to Study in Israel at Ben-Gurion UniversityLooking to study abroad this summer? This is your chance to study at the #18 ranked University in the QS World University Rankings Top 50 Under 50 2015! Compete in the challenge to win a travel grant to study at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Take the BGU Challenge and the analytical challenge, submit a motivational statement and it could be you winning the travel grant for this summer! Don’t miss this exclusive chance to study at Israel’s fastest growing institution of higher education. Please see website for more details.Brownstone Scholarship ProgramBrownstone Scholarship Program is offering an annual scholarship to all graduate and undergraduate students. We believe in spontaneous creativity, and the internal spark that resides within the individual can move the world. We invite you to be part of building the future. We encourage you to make a difference. Candidates must write a 1000 word essay to be eligible. Please see website for more details.Flosum 2016 ScholarshipThis is a $750 scholarship award for the students registered in a 4-year university course in the United States of America. The fields of learning that one is supposed to pursue in order to be eligible for the scholarship include computer science, computer engineering or any other discipline that is technical such as electrical engineering. Please see website for more details.The Persons in or Affected by Recovery ScholarshipThis $1000 scholarship was created to acknowledge the powerful journey that accompanies addiction recovery. As somebody who is personally in recovery, I wanted to make this scholarship available to help those who are working to help themselves. It is open to all qualifying students enrolled in a 2-year, 4-year, graduate level or certification program. Please see website for more details.Online Schools Offering Laptops Essay ScholarshipDo you need money for college? How about for books? We understand these expenses can add up quickly and want to help. The scholarship award is a one time disbursement of $2500 to the chosen student. All applicants must submit a minimum 350 word essay regarding technology in the classroom. Please see website for more detailsThe Grimes Logistics & Supply Chain ScholarshipThe Grimes Companies offer this scholarship program because we are extremely passionate about logistics and its ability to transform our economy and business world. At the Grimes Companies, we want to promote education and the groundbreaking use of logistics to facilitate growth and positive change in the logistics and transportation industry. Two $750 scholarships are available. Please see website for more detailsOneTri $500 Student Triathlete ScholarshipTriathletes understand that reaching your goals takes commitment and passion. Being an excellent student takes these same attributes, but also requires a love of learning. If you’re a student and a tri-athlete, OneTri wants to give you the chance to win $500 towards your education expenses. Students must be enrolled or accepted to an accredited college and must have participated in a triathlon. Please see website for more details.China University ScholarshipsIn order to push the educational internationalization, encourage more international students to come to study in China universities. Many universities in China have established a variety of scholarship programs for international students. Chinese universities offer a wide variety of academic programs in Science, Engineering, Agriculture, Medicine, Law, Economics, Management, Education, Liberal Arts, Philosophy, History, and Fine Arts for scholarship winners at all levels. Please see CUCAS China Scholarships website for more details.Chinese Local Government ScholarshipsIn order to promote the development of higher education of International students in Chinese provinces and cities, to further improve the talent cultivation, scientific research, social service, and cultural exchange, many provinces and cities have established a variety of scholarship programs to attract more outstanding international students to come to study in China. Please see CUCAS China Scholarships website for more details.Confucius Institute ScholarshipFor the purpose of supporting the development of Confucius Institutes, facilitating international promotion of Chinese language and dissemination of Chinese culture, as well as cultivating qualified Chinese-language teachers and excellent Chinese-language learners, Confucius Institute Headquarters launches a ‘Confucius Institute Scholarship’ program to sponsor foreign students, scholars and Chinese language teachers to study Chinese in relevant universities of China. Please see CUCAS China Scholarships website for more details.Chinese Government ScholarshipsIn order to promote the mutual understanding, cooperation and exchanges in politics, economy, culture, education and trade between China and other countries, the Chinese government has set up a series of scholarship programs to sponsor international students, teachers and scholars to study and conduct research in Chinese universities. Chinese Government Scholarship supports international students, teachers and scholars to pursue degrees at all levels (bachelor’s, master’s and PhD) or non-degree studies and to conduct research in China. Please see CUCAS China Scholarships website for more details.Confucius China Studies ProgramIn order to foster deep understanding of China and the Chinese culture among young generations from around the world, enable the prosperous growth of China studies, promote the sustainable development of Confucius Institutes, and enhance the friendly relationship between China and the people of other countries, the Confucius Institute Headquarters has set up the 'Confucius China Studies Program'. Please see CUCAS China Scholarships website for more details.China Enterprise ScholarshipsTo encourage the all around development of students and reward outstanding contributions of foreign students, many enterprises have established a variety of scholarship programs. Enterprise scholarships aim to promote cross-cultural exchanges and friendly communication between China and other counties. Please see CUCAS China Scholarships website for more details.China Foreign Government ScholarshipsMany foreign councils are offering different scholarships to encourage and support their student mobility to China. Foreign Government Scholarships are for students to undertake a period of study at a university in China. Please see CUCAS China Scholarships website for more details.The Global Study AwardsStudyPortals offers students the chance to receive up to £10,000 to expand their horizon and study abroad. We want to ultimately encourage young people to study abroad as part of their tertiary studies in order to experience and explore new countries, cultures and languages. The Global Study Awards recognises studying abroad as a positively life changing experience for many students, opening their minds to alternative ways of personal life and professional career, as well as promoting intercultural understanding and tolerance. Please see website for more information.Bulk Office Supply ScholarshipDiscount Office Supplies, Office Paper Products Legal Supplies offers more than school supplies we are there to help students pursue their goals. We have implemented a program to help students express their educational goals and future plans. At Bulk Office Supply we want to help students throughout the U.S.A. have an opportunity to get a scholarship. If you have an interest in teaching, Art or owning your own business you are eligible to apply for our $1000 scholarship program. The program is open to all high school students as well as College Freshmen and Sophomores. Please see website for more details.ScholarTrips 2016ScholarTrips is a national scholarship contest designed to reward creativity and the desire to learn through international travel. This year we will give away six $2,500 scholarships to students who want to study or volunteer abroad. Applicants can enter by answering the question: "What inspires you to travel abroad?" in a short video or 500-word essay and submitting a form in our website. The contest runs from October 10 - November 10, 2016 and is open only to legal residents of the 50 United States and District of Columbia, who are at least 14 years of age at the time of application, and are students at a state-accredited high school or trade school, or an accredited university or college at time of entry. Please see website for more details.Rotary International District 5450 Ambassadorial ScholarshipDistrict 54500 in Colorado, USA offers $30,000 in Rotary Scholarships. The District will select two candidates and work jointly with the candidates to submit the scholarship Grant application to Rotary. Global Grant Scholarship Candidates must demonstrate previous work experience, intended graduate degree studies, and future career plans that are related to one of the following study areas as established by The Rotary Foundation and Rotary International: Peace and conflict prevention/resolution Disease prevention and treatment Water and sanitation Maternal and child health Basic education and literacy Economic and community development. Please see website for more details.Sage One ScholarshipSage is awarding two $10,000 scholarships—one each in the U.S. and Canada. The Sage One Scholarship program allows you the opportunity to win a scholarship that will allow you to enhance your education to become the next great leader of your generation. Develop the necessary skills you need for business and be ready for the next stage in your career. Please see the website for more detailsNASP Ph.D. Scholarships in Social and Political Sciences - ItalyNASP is a research-based training network that involves eight universities in Northern Italy. The Network for the Advancement of Social and Political Sciences (NASP) is accepting applications for admission to the Ph.D. Programmes in Economic Sociology and Labour Studies (13 scholarship positions), Political Studies (10 scholarship positions), Sociology and Methodology of Social Research (7 scholarship positions. NASP offers a total of 30 Ph.D. positions covered by scholarships. Full information on how to submit applications is provided by the Call for Application. Scholarship amount: Approximately 13.500 euro per year, renewable for up to three years. The application deadline is August 31st, 2015.Calvin L Carrithers Aviation ScholarshipThis scholarship has been developed for the continuing education of the next generation of aviators. Aircraft for Sale at Globalair.com, Airport data, Aircraft fuel, Aircraft resources is passionate about supporting the future of aviation. Whether a professional pilot who flies for a living or for the pure pleasure and satisfaction of becoming a pilot. The purpose of this scholarship is to provide $1,000 annually to four students who are dedicated to blogging on a weekly basis about flight training, flying, school and their interest in aviation. Please see website fro more information.Training.com.au ScholarshipAt Training.com.au - Australia's no. 1 TAFE & University courses website our goal is to help people open the doors to a bright future. To find success and happiness in their chosen field. Success means different things to different people, so in 500 words or less we’d like you to tell us what success means to you. The prize: A $1000 grant paid towards your HELP debt or university tuition fees, or towards the price of any course listed on Training.com.au - Australia's no. 1 TAFE & University courses website. Please see website for more informationTrade Show Display Pros ScholarshipTradeshowDisplayPros.com will be awarding a $500 academic scholarship to one qualified student pursuing a marketing or design career. Submissions for the 2015 Trade Show Display Pros Scholarship are being accepted right now! We will select one amazing student who provides the best trade show display design. You must be actively pursuing a degree or certification in art, graphic design, marketing, or any other related field. All entries must be submitted no later than August 31, 2015. Please see website for specific design information and rules.$500 Scholarship for High and Middle School Students in the USAChameleonJohn has established this scholarship to help High and Middle School students who are struggling financially all around the USA. $1,500 will be awarded to 3 people, $500 each. The $500 scholarship will help them buy the necessary school equipment and fund some of their tutoring activities. Your School has to be one of our partners for this campaign, please check the list on our website.Dumbo Moving's Moving Forward ScholarshipWe are looking for students who have extraordinary talents or grades. We will be rewarding one person of extraordinary talent with $3,000. The decision will be made by company management based on the following criteria: awards on different state, national or international competitions, GPA, or talents. We are looking for something interesting or out of the ordinary.Zip Conferencing ScholarshipZip Conferencing is offering a $2500 scholarship. The Zip Conferencing Scholarship is open to all communications, marketing and business school students. Zip Conferencing will award one $2500 scholarship to the student who writes the best response to the following questions: In what ways have the use of new communication technologies affected the way that you interact with the world around you? How do you plan on employing the skills learned from those experiences in pursuit of your professional goals?National Debt Relief ScholarshipThe NEA says "If the United States is to hold a competitive edge in a rapidly changing global workforce, bolstering the nation's science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce is essential." National Debt Relief supports this effort and wants to encourage students to pursue careers in these fields to bolster our future economic prosperity. National Debt Relief will award 5 scholarships of $1,000 each to outstanding college students pursuing studies in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields.IBS Starter Scholarships (ONLY FOR BACHELOR!)The IBS Starter Scholarship offers to cover 50% of the first year tuition fee for applicants for any any Buckingham-validated English-language Bachelor programme of IBS. Students should first apply online for the Bachelor programme of IBS and upload the required documents (high school diploma or latest transcript if diploma is not acquired yet, passport and IELTS or TOEFL language certificate). Students are supposed to indicate simultaneously their respective wish to be granted IBS Starter scholarship by emailing until 30 April 2015. Applications will be approved by the Rector and there is no appeal against his decision. If scholarship is approved, students must pay the remaining part of their tuition fee latest until 31 May 2015. Must be age 18-25 with IELTS overall band score 6.5 (with at least 6.0 in each component) or TOEFL 90 iBT.CustomerBloom's Scholarship Contest)This is a new $1,000 scholarship award open to graduate and under graduate students (Open to all branches). The goal is to provide support to build on the collective experience of these individuals on how to implement better ways of improving business, life, and wealth! The Customerblooms Scholarship Contest will require students to think outside the box and strategize how to STEP UP in the real world. The contest requires you to create a Short 2-5 minute video of yourself talking about how ideas help shape the world around us, why education is a critical element to future success, and touching on why you strive for greatness ” what motivates you”?2015 Iron Security College ScholarshipIron Security Inc. is offering a $500 scholarship that will be given to the student who writes the most engaging blog post about this year's topic: "When was the last time you were put in a situation where you had only a few moments to react and what was the outcome?". Iron Security College Scholarship Blog Contest is sponsored by Iron Security and is open to all high school seniors and full-time college students in the United States that maintain a 2.5 GPA.The Giving Back ProgramThe Human Interaction Project (HIP) just launched its travel scholarship program, The Giving Back Program, in which applicants 18-25 years old can apply for a volunteer abroad opportunity to be fully funded by HIP. Founded in 2014 by global adventurer, motivational speaker, author and philanthropist, Leon Logothetis, the Human Interaction Project aims to educate others through real life, hands on experiences that impact change on an individual and global level through one adventure at a time. Logothetis witnessed the power of change firsthand while sleeping on the streets of Philadelphia, traveling across the United Kingdom on $5 a day and nearly dying whilst attempting a 10,000-mile drive across Europe. Students will be given a travel experience in partnership with the international volunteering and learning organization UBELONG. The Giving Back Program will cover airfare, housing, UBELONG program fees, medical insurance, and some incidentals.Annuity.org Community ScholarshipAs part of our core value of "community," we want to encourage students to think about their financial futures long before they graduate. Our essay topic is designed around a concept that’s easy to understand but difficult to execute: being responsible with your money. Please submit a 700-1,400 word essay on the prompt: "You just won a $10 million lottery jackpot! Outline your plan to be a savvy investor", including a works-cited page with at least 3 sources. Must be a student enrolled in a U.S. College to enter.S P Jain Global Business ScholarshipsS P Jain School of Global Management (SPJ) is offering full and partical scholarships towards tuition and acommodation costs, to students for its tri-city bachelor, masters and MBA programs in Global Business. This scholarship is for students coming from Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, North and Latin America, who have a keen interest to live and study in Singapore, Australia and Dubai. Upon successful completion, students are awarded a degree fully accredited by The Government of Australia. S P Jain's Global MBA was ranked #19 in the world by Forbes Magazine. Requirements: A passion for Global Business, adventurous, demonstrate excellent academic credentials,evidence English proficiency, achievement in extra-curricular activities is also a plus.Challenge Your Perspectives 2016Challenge Your Perspectives is open to students with a bachelor's from the US, who can win a full tuition fee waiver for a two-year master's program at Chalmers University of Technology's department of Technology Management and Economics, as well as a summer job at Volvo in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2016. One American bachelor's student will be awarded with a full tuition fee waiver for a master’s program at Chalmers University of Technology, in the Technology Management and Economics department. The programs include: Entrepreneurship and Business Design Management and Economics of Innovation Quality and Operations Management Supply Chain Management How to compete: 1. Register on the website 2. Take the quizzes Swedish Innovation Chalmers University of Technology Technology management 3. Write an essay 4. Submit a personal statement 5. Share your entry! 6. Apply for one of the master’s programsPublic Engagement Competition 2015 2016Student Competitions offers you the chance to win a scholarship to complete your bachelor’s degree at The New School! If you are an adult or transfer student looking to complete your bachelor’s degree, join the Public Engagement Competition and compete for a scholarship to complete your studies at The New School for Public Engagement in New York City beginning fall 2015. 1 full- and 1 partial-scholarship for the Bachelor’s Program for Adults and Transfer Students are available in the competition. Here’s how it works: Register for the competition Answer the multiple-choice questions Submit a video telling ”Your Story” Apply to The New School for Public Engagement Applicants will be judged according to their performance in the quizzes as well as the quality of their video presentations. The winning submission will win a full-tuition scholarship and the runner-up will win a partial-tuition scholarship.The New School Competition 2015Student Competitions offers you the chance to create your future and win a scholarship for a bachelor’s degree program at The New School in NYC! 5 full-tuition and 5 partial-tuition scholarships are available in The New School Competition. The competition is open for graduating high school students who want to begin undergraduate studies in fall 2015 at the renowned The New School in New York City. Non-graduating high school students are also welcome to join the competition and compete for Apple iPad Minis. Here’s how it works: Register for the competition. Answer the multiple-choice questions Submit a video explaining why “You are New School��. Apply to your chosen division of The New School. Applicants will be judged according to their performance in the quizzes as well as the quality of their video presentations. The winning submission from each division of The New School will be awarded a full-tuition scholarship; 2nd prize winners will win a partial-tuition scholarship.Blue Bag Water Innovation AwardLess than 5% of inhabitants in Jakarta have access to municipal sewage. Now you can make a difference and affect real change. Innovate a solution to improve access to clean water in this challenge and win a full scholarship for the two-year Master’s Programme in Water Resources Engineering at Lund University in Sweden worth approximately 48,000 EURO. IKEA Indonesia will donate 100% of revenues from the sale of all blue bags to Mercy Corps Indonesia’s local water sanitation and sewage project.Future Of The Internet Scholarship Essay ContestVSOD is offering a $500 college scholarship in 2015 to help assist students working towards a degree and to increase awareness in internet technologies and connectivity in the United States. The Internet is currently an open entity for all people who have access to it to be able to voice their thoughts and opinions. With a large majority of people having at least basic access to the web, the following questions remains: What is the future of the Internet? What more could it become?Rural Students Scholarship Essay ContestThe Rural Students Scholarship Essay Contest is sponsored by Blaze Wifi and open to all HS seniors and full-time college students in the USA maintaining a 3.0 GPA. Many people do not realize that rural areas are more at risk economically than larger cities and more populated areas of the United States. We offer this scholarship in an effort to promote digital literacy and higher education in underdeveloped and potentially at-risk rural areas of the United States.Tortuga Backpacks Study Abroad ScholarshipThe Tortuga Backpacks Study Abroad Scholarship is awarded to passionate students who want to see the world. You deserve the opportunity to explore beyond your college campus. Travel can be transformative. This scholarship is our way of giving students the same life-changing opportunities to travel that we have had. Amount: $1,000 plus a travel backpack Requirements: US citizen or student vias holder, full-time undergraduate student in good academic standing at a four-year, degree-granting college or university in the US, applied to or been accepted into a study abroad program eligible for credit by your college or university. Deadline: spring semester - December 19th, fall semester - May 19thActing: Stanislavsky ScholarshipSRAS is celebrating theater in Russia by offering three $750 scholarships for students who enroll in Acting in Russia, a 6-week intensive summer program of Russian-style actor training for English-speaking actors, hosted in St. Petersburg, Russia. Scholarship participants will be expected to contribute weekly blog entries and a 2-3 page end-of- program summation essay describing what they are learning, experiencing, and how they plan to use this knowledge and experience in the future.Achieve ScholarshipMaking a full-time commitment to your college education pays off. Introducing the NEW Achieve Scholarship-designed to help you save money on your path to a successful future. Created exclusively for incoming students, if you enroll full-time at Rasmussen College for Fall 2013 or Winter 2014, you may qualify to be awarded $500 per quarter toward your tuition costs-up to $7,500 on your Bachelor's degree.* If you are considering Rasmussen College, now is the time to take advantage of this exciting opportunity to lower your tuition and achieve your academic and career goals.The Achieve Scholarship isn't just great for traditional full-time students; it's also a valuable opportunity for military students, transfer students and women to save money on their tuition Amount of scholarship: $500 per quarter up to $7500 on a Bachelor's degreeRequirements: Meet academic requirements, maintain 2.5 GPA, Meet full-time credit load requirements* * AcceleratED students must take two courses each session/four courses total each quarter.AIFS ScholarshipsAIFS Scholarships are available to both summer and semester study abroad students. AIFS awards over $600,000 in scholarships and grants each year through Affiliate Grants with your school, International and Diversity Scholarships, and more.Ali Kusçu Science and Technology Graduate ScholarshipAli Kusçu Science and Technology Graduate Scholarship is designed for students who are willing to study at the fields of science and technology. This program provides scholarships for masters and PhD levels. Ali Kusçu Science and Technology Graduate Scholarship program is available for non-Turkish nationals from all countries.AMIDEAST Education AbroadAMIDEAST Education Abroad scholarships will be made in the form of a program fee reduction and average between $500 and $1000 for summer programs, and between $500 and $2,000 for semester and academic-year programs. In exceptional circumstances, awards of up to $2000 may be made for summer programs, and up to $5000 for semester and academic-year programs.API Study Abroad ScholarshipsAPI Awards $335,000 in scholarships yearly in a variety of programs. Scholarships are merit or diversity based, and are open to students participating in an API program.Association of Commonwealth UniversitiesProvides lists of scholarships and fellowships to and from over 480 universities drawn from the Commonwealth countries of Africa and Asia, Australasia and the South Pacific, Canada and the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, Cyprus and Malta.Athena Penny ScholarshipAs an easy way to save $250 and to begin mentally preparing for the experience of a lifetime, Athena offers the Penny Scholarship. All students have to do is write a 500 word essay on why they want to study abroad in either Cadiz or Kyoto!Bard College – Institute for International Liberal EducationEvery year, the Institute for International Liberal Education at Bard College, which administers the study abroad programs in Germany, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Palestine, Russia, and South Africa, awards approximately $300,000 in need-based scholarship aid to students participating in our study abroad programs. Approximately 70% of participants receive scholarship support from Bard.BG ScholarshipThe BG Scholarship is available to high school and college students. You must have a minimum 2.0 GPA to be eligible for this award. You must also submit an 250word essay about your academic goals and your contributions to your school and / or community. Please visit the sponsor's Web site for additional information.Boren Scholarships and FellowshipsOpportunities are provided for U.S. undergraduate and graduate students to become more proficient in the cultures and languages of world regions critical to U.S. interests, including Africa, Asia, Central & Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Maximum awards are $20,000 for the Boren Scholarships and $30,000 for the Boren Fellowships. In exchange for funding, recipients commit to working in the federal government for a minimum of one yearBritish CouncilScholarships are offered for students studying in the United Kingdom. Scholarships, grants, bursaries, fellowships, financial awards, loans… there are many financial support options for international students who wish to study on a UK course. Demand for scholarships is always greater than supply; to maximise your chances, apply as early as you can.BrokerFish 2015 Scholarship for University StudentsThe BrokerFish $1,000 University Scholarship is available in spring 2015 to students who are currently pursuing any university course. Applicants must be full-time students of any nationality who are pursuing an undergraduate "degree", "diploma" or equivalent program by an accredited institution of higher education.BUNAC Educational Scholarship TrustAt the judging stage, preference is given to those whose proposed study in North America is likely to do most to further transatlantic understanding and/or to those who are required to go to the US or Canada to do a specific course. Candidates cannot already be engaged in their course of study in North America at the time of application although they should be looking to apply to courses in their chosen field.BUTEX scholarshipThe Universities Transatlantic Exchange Association (BUTEX) offer scholarships of £500 (pounds sterling) to students studying at a member university in the UK. Scholarships are available for a semester or a year.Cairo University Engineering Travel GrantsCairo University Engineering Travel Grants are funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of State for students participating on the Summer History of Engineering or the Cairo University Civil Engineering semester. Please note that under the terms of the grant from the Department of State, only students who are eligible for Pell Grants and Stafford Loans can be considered for these Travel Grants.CAPA International EducationCAPA International Education has more than doubled the amount of scholarship money awarded annually to program participants. Each year, thousands of dollars in scholarships will be given to students who submit application materials demonstrating high academic achievement and financial need. CAPA also offers access scholarships for students who identify with one or more groups whose representation within the study abroad community has been unequal to its representation within the United States population.CC-CS Scholarship ProgramSpanish Studies Scholarship ProgramCC-CS awards several scholarships to students participating in a CC- CS program. Scholarships are awarded based on diversity or merit.Centre for Islamic Economics, Banking and Finance ScholarshipThe Centre for Islamic Economics, Banking and Finance at School of Economics and Business in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) is pleased to announce call for the award of two scholarships for the academic 2014/2015, which will consist of €3579,25 stipend per year (50% of tuition fee) for funding master studies in the field of Islamic Banking in Sarajevo. Eligible for scholarship are international students who intend to enrol in the master studies in the field of Islamic Banking at the University of Sarajevo.CFHI Global Health ProgramCFHI offers scholarships towards specific program months each year. CFHI Global Health Education Programs are internship-style programs in clinical health settings in Latin America, India and South Africa.Challenge Your Perspectives: The Swedish Scholarship Awards 2015Eligibility:Recent U.S. graduates and young professionalsSteps to enter:Knowledge TestCurrent International AffairsSwedish Society and Education SystemPolitical Science, Environmental Management or Development StudiesEssay WritingPersonal StatementCharles Braver Language Exploration GrantsThe Charles Braver Language Exploration Grant offers one award of $500 each for summer, fall, and spring sessions for students who enroll in any regular SRAS program. It's intended to offset the costs of SRAS study abroad programs for students who demonstrate clear goals in gaining an understanding of Russia – the country, its people, and its language. The grant is dedicated in memory of Charles Braver, an educator who worked for many years to promote and practice cross- cultural teaching, learning, and geographical and intellectual exploration. Eligibility: Students must enroll in an SRAS program (http://www.sras.org/programs) and must have completed two semesters of Russian, Chinese, or the study of any Central Asian language. The applicant must have a GPA of 3.0 or higher and must be enrolled full time in an academic program based in North America or the European Union when applying.CIEE Global Access Initiative [GAIN] ScholarshipCIEE created the Global Access Initiative (GAIN) to help students overcome the major barriers to studying abroad, namely costs and curriculum requirements. GAIN aids in the diversification of study abroad by providing overseas opportunities for students who are economically challenged, or from diverse backgrounds or underrepresented fields of study. Each year, CIEE provides $1 million in grants and scholarships to expand access for students with full-year scholarships, semester scholarships, and summer study abroad scholarships programs.CIEE Language Intensive Focus Track [LIFT] ScholarshipCIEE's Language Intensive Focus Track (LIFT) scholarship program commits $100,000 annually to help fund the extended study of a single world language by today's top college and university students.CISabroad ScholarshipsCISabroad scholarships are available to students who participate in a CISabroad semester, summer or internship program. Scholarships are awarded based on merit and 70% of all CISabroad students receive a study abroad scholarship or grant. Some scholarships include CISabroad Correspondent , CISabroad Photo Journalist, and CISabroad Green Scholarship.Critical Language Scholarship ProgramThe CLS Program is part of a U.S. Government effort to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical need foreign languages. Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) institutes provide fully-funded group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences for seven to ten weeks for U.S. citizen undergraduate, Master’s and Ph.D. students.DAAD - German Academic Exchange ServiceScholarships are offered to undergraduate and graduate students from the United States and Canada for short and long term study in Germany. Students are eligible for participation in summer study abroad, internships, senior thesis research or summer courses at German universities. Long term scholarships are available for semester or year study abroad."Define Yourself" ScholarshipWho are you as a student? An athlete, a history ace, a star on the drums, class treasurer, a student volunteer, or something completely different? GoEnnounce wants to reward you with a $500 scholarship for being YOU! The $500 Scholarship is an ongoing, monthly scholarship open to high school seniors, college freshmen, sophomores & juniors who plan on attending a 4 year college in the Fall of 2013.Dr. Castañeda ScholarshipIn pursuit of its goals of enhancing cultural awareness and providing students with the independence and language skills necessary for the workplace, The Dr. Carlos E. Castañeda Memorial Scholarships seek to help those who may not otherwise be able to study abroad. Consideration for the scholarships is based equally on the student's scholastic achievements and their financial need.Finland US Senate Youth ExchangeA scholarship, to study in Finland for the summer. Open to high school students nationwide with sophomore or junior class standing at the time of application deadline. Students must hold a 3.2 grade point average or better on a 4.0 scale. Only US citizens may apply. No prior foreign language study is required.Foreign Language and Area Studies FellowshipsFellowships are awarded to students undergoing training in modern foreign languages and related area or international studies. Students apploy through their home university.Freeman-ASIAFreeman Awards for Study in Asia (Freeman-ASIA) provides scholarships for U.S. undergraduate students with demonstrated financial need to study abroad in East or Southeast Asia. The program’s goal is to increase the number of Americans with first-hand exposure to and understanding of Asia and its peoples and cultures. Award amounts range from $3,000 to $7,000 depending on the length of study.Fullbright ScholarshipsGrants are made to citizens of participating countries, primarily for: university teaching, advanced research, graduate study and teaching in elementary and secondary schools.Fund for Education Abroad ScholarshipsThe Fund for Education Abroad is an independent organization that is committed to increasing the opportunities for dedicated American students to participate in high- quality, rigorous education abroad programs by reducing financial restrictions through the provision of scholarships. FEA goals include increasing the number and diversity of students studying abroad, in particular underrepresented students. Up to $5,000 for a semester and $10,000 for a year.FutureUnlimited-AustraliaA variety of scholarships are offered by public and private organizations to students wishing to study abroad in australia. An easy to navigate database is provided to help find the right program.Gilman International Scholarship ProgramThe Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship program is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State and administered by the Institute of International Education. This program seeks to lower barriers to undergraduate study abroad by offering scholarships to students with financial need, and we encourage those underrepresented in study abroad to apply. The award is up to $5,000 for semester or academic year programs.GotChosen’s Evolution GamesThis is a monthly contest – ending on the last day of each month. For each month of the game scholarship contest, GotChosen will offer different games to play. Players can earn points three different ways; by winning games, by winning different games, and by providing constructive feedback to the game developers about their games. The player with the highest rank at the end of the contest will win a $1,000 scholarship prize.GotScholarship $20K Give AwayThe GotScholarship $20K Give Away program is easy and free to enter and the scholarship is not awarded based on academic achievement or financial need. Instead, the winner is selected by a random drawing. Open to all fields of study, the US $20,000 must be used for “educational expenses”, this includes: tuition, fees, books, supplies, equipment required for study.Greenpal business scholarshipThe purpose of The GreenPal Small Business Scholarship is to assist a motivated, driven student and future business leader. We believe that the generation of today's students are the future employers of tomorrow. The future of our county will be forged by the entrepreneurial spirit of today's generation. Applicant must be a High School senior or be currently enrolled in a college of business with a 3.0 GPA or higher. Must demonstrate ambition to be an entrepreneur or business owner and funds must be used for full-time enrollment at accredited nonprofit two or four-year colleges, Universities, vocational or technical schools.Hispanic Study Abroad ScholarsThe HSAS Scholarship offers $1,000 per semester to students of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) attending Global Learning Semesters programs.IAF Grassroots Development Fellowship ProgramCandidates for Ph.D. degrees from United States universities as they conduct their dissertation research, who are citizens of the United States or of an independent country in Latin America or the Caribbean, are eligible for the IAF Fellowships. The fellowships are intended to increase awareness of grassroots development efforts while building a community of professionals and scholars knowledgeable in the subject.Fellowship awards include a research allowance of up to $3,000; a $1,500 monthly stipend for a period from between four to 12 months, international round trip transportation to the research site, health insurance and attendance at a mandatory mid- year conference.Imperial Education Services - Study in Cyprus ScholarshipThe University of Nicosia, which is the leading private university in Cyprus, the Largest and only University in Cyprus with three campuses in the major cities of Nicosia, Limassol and Larnaca[North and South Cyprus] in partnership with UNICAF launched a very generous Scholarship Programme to gifted underprivileged students from Africa. As the Official Nigerian Representative to the University of Nicosia, Cyprus, Imperial Educational Services has been helping students from Nigeria and Africa to access this Scholarship grants. Under the UNICAF Scholarship scheme, African Students are eligible to get between 25% – 80% tuition Scholarship. The normal fees for the MBA,M.Ed or BA Business distance learning degrees are €10,000 out of which UNICAF subsidises €8,000.International WaterCentre’s Masters ScholarshipsEvery year, the International WaterCentre (IWC) offers full and partial scholarships to support future water leaders. The IWC Masters Scholarships are prestigious scholarships awarded annually to high calibre candidates accepted into the Master of Integrated Water Management (MIWM) and who clearly demonstrate potential to become water leaders of the future. Scholarships open to Australian and international students. Apply for a scholarship by 1 August.International MA Program in Archaeology and History of the Land of the Bible ScholarshipThe Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures of Tel Aviv University is pleased to announce tuition assistance scholarships for the academic year of 2013-14. The 5,000 USD Scholarships will be granted to a limited number of excellent students who wish to broaden their knowledge and understanding of ancient Israel, as part of Tel Aviv University's one year International MA Program in Archaeology and History of the Land of the Bible. The scholarships will be granted to students chosen by an academic committee, based on an academic CV, final grades sheet from the last academic establishment and an abstract of the final paper submitted in the last academic establishment. Tel Aviv University is currently awarding full tuition scholarships to students from China on the basis of academic excellence.Irwin Abrams and Paula L. Spier Study Abroad ScholarshipAntioch Education Abroad (AEA) is very pleased to introduce a new scholarship to honor our co-founders, two visionary leaders in the field of international education. Irwin Abrams and Paula Lazarus Spier were influential as early theorists and practitioners of international education, and co-founded Antioch Education Abroad in 1957. The scholarship is need- based, and aims to support broader access to study abroad opportunities through AEA. It supports the core values and vision of Antioch University to build diverse, inclusive learning communities, and to offer transformative education in a global context. Multiple Scholarships will be awarded each year.ISA Diversity ScholarshipsISA began offering this scholarship in the fall of 2008, with $10,000 in awards annually to be used towards ISA programs. The ISA Diversity Scholarships aim to encourage students of a broader cultural make-up to participate in ISA programs by offering funds to assist with the expenses of studying abroad.Japan-American Friendship Scholars (JAFS)A scholarship to study in Japan for the summer. Open to students with at least 1 year of Japanese language prior to departure on program.John Cabot University RomeAs an overseas American liberal arts university, John Cabot has as its mission the goal of creating a community of both degree and visiting students. To recognize the important role visiting students have in promoting JCU's mission, a limited number scholarships are available for visiting students who qualify. Scholarship awards range from $500- $2,000.KCP ScholarshipThese merit-based scholarships are offered to students whose housing, whether homestay or dormitory, is arranged by KCP, and who are enrolling in the KCP program for academic credit. This scholarship can be applied to our regular term (semester), extended programs, or summer short-term program. It is not currently available to our summer 5-week business and language program.Key Club/Key Leader ScholarshipA partial scholarship towards the tuition of the country of your choice for the length of your choice.Kikkoman NationalA full scholarship to study in Japan for members of FCCLA. 14 scholarships for students who are dues-paying members of Family Careers and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA).LIVFundLearn, Intern & Volunteer in Latin America. LIVFund has been designed for anyone interested in studying, interning and volunteering in Latin America and who would like to offset program or living abroad costs. LIVFund awards 24 scholarships annually and accepts applications from candidates coming to Latin America to work, intern or volunteer independently or through an organized program for any length of time. We believe that the exchange of cultures makes the world a better place, and we have created LIVFund to help with that mission!Marie McKay Global Citizen ScholarshipThe McKay Global Citizen Scholarship is awarded to the Athena student who best demonstrates an interest and intention to promote social justice at any level. We believe study abroad students are future leaders and want to reward a student who has intentions of applying the skills and lessons learned abroad to their future endeavors.Mazda/NationwideA full scholarship to study in Japan for the summer.Michele Lavagnilio Charitable Service ScholarshipThe Michele Lavagnilio Charitable Service Scholarship is designed for the Athena student who best demonstrates commitment to a charitable service in his or her community. We at Athena place a high value on giving back to communities around the world, and this scholarship is to reward a student with similar values. The student should have a history of taking the initiative and making the world a better place through service. The scholarship is in honor of Michele Lavagnilio who helped children with autism through the Cireneo Onlus Foundation. Tragically, Michele passed at the age of 25 in the devastating earthquake of 2009 in L’Aquilia, Italy. Recipients will have the privilege of meeting his parents while in Italy.MSc scholarshipsAre you a graduating student interested in Health Sciences and are still trying to decide what you might do next year, consider applying to one of the Master's degree programmes at Queen's University Belfast. We currently have FULL tuition fee studentships available for international students applying to: MSc Public Health, MSc Computational Biology, MRes Molecular MedicineNGO Scholarship ProgramsSRAS offers three $750 scholarships to students participating in our NGO and Cultural Internships Program. Scholarship participants will be expected to contribute weekly blog entries and a 2-3 page end-of-program summation essay describing what they are learning, experiencing, and how they plan to use this knowledge and experience in the future. Eligibility: Students who enroll in the NGO and Cultural Internship Program (http://www.sras.org/internships_ngo_museum_theater) are eligible for the grant.Nottingham Trent University’s Scholarships for Art, Design and Built Environment studentsScholarships to the value of 10 weeks’ tuition (£3,775) and accommodation (up to the value of £100 per week) is available for Study Abroad applicants from North America applying for the programme during the 2012/13 academic year. To be eligible you’ll need to meet the requirements for our Study Abroad programme, be ordinarily resident in North America and apply before the deadline of Friday 29 June 2012.Okinawa Peace Scholarship ProgramPartial scholarship to study in Okinawa for a summer. 10 summer scholarships for students to be placed in Okinawa, Japan. Students must have a 3.0 or higher grade point average on a 4.0 scale.ORA Summer School ScholarshipEvery year Oxford Royale Academy provides financial aid to students who will not be able to enrol on our courses otherwise. Students who can exhibit outstanding academic performance and financial hardship may apply for an academic scholarship which may result in a maximum 100% reduction in course fees.Oxbridge Academic ProgramsOxbridge Academic Programs offers scholarships in each of its nine programs in England, France, Spain, and New York. Scholarships are awarded based on both a student’s financial need as well as academic performance. Scholarship applications for each summer become available each October and can be found on www.oxbridgeprograms.com. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact our offices.Pacific Prime Global Diversity ScholarshipPacific Prime Insurance Brokers will be awarding scholarships of $1000 to three international students who are enrolled to study abroad in Asia for at least one semester in 2013. To apply, students should write an essay of 700-1500 words, on one or all of the following topics: health, diversity, travel, education.Phi Kappa Phi Study Abroad GrantPhi Kappa Phi Study Abroad Grants are designed to help support undergraduates as they seek knowledge and experience in their academic fields by studying abroad. Fifty $1,000 grants are awarded each year.Ping Foundation: CIEE International Study Program ScholarshipsIn an effort to make study abroad opportunities available to the widest possible audience, CIEE offers scholarships each year to CIEE study abroad program participants who demonstrate both academic excellence and financial need.Qalam wa Lawh Center for Arabic StudiesSelected students will receive a full scholarship to be immersed in intensive Arabic language classes as well as other cultural programs such as cooking, calligraphy, and trips to venues of cultural interest and significance throughout Morocco. The scholarship covers all costs of tuition and housing for the duration of the semester dates indicated on the attached flyer. Students will study at our state of the art facility with full amenities.Randolph College GrantA non-repayable combination of academic and need-based grants up to a maximum of $16,995 for a full academic year ($8,497 per semester). You must file a FAFSA to be considered for a grant.Short-Term Service ScholarshipThe purpose of the short- term service scholarship is to promote Athena’s valued dedication to charity and the idea of giving back. To apply for the scholarship Athena students must devote a day towards a service project of their choosing. During the project, applicants should have a photo taken to be sent in as part of their application. The other portion of the application is a 200 word essay explaining the project, why it was chosen, and what the student learned from the experience.Sibling and Repeat Student GrantsISA and ELAP offers grants to students who have previously participated in an ISA or ELAP program, regardless of the length of time (if any) that passes between the two programs. Please note that students participating in an ISA Customized Program are not eligible for this scholarship.SRAS Research GrantsResearch Abroad Grants are $1000 each. Up to one (1) grant will be given each year. The grant is applied toward the recipient's SRAS account as partial payment of the required SRAS educational program and any optional research services requested. On the basis of that educational program, SRAS will assist the student in obtaining the proper visa and affordable housing, obtaining health insurance, and gaining official Russian university affiliation (needed to gain access to many archives. Optional research services can assist in locating translators and experts in the field, navigating archives, etc.). In addition, depending on the program chosen, it will provide lessons in language and other subjects. Eligibility: Upperclassmen (juniors and seniors), graduate and postgraduate students in any field of study may apply. The applicant must have a GPA of 3.2 or above and must be enrolled in an academic program based in North America or the European Union when applying. The applicant must also apply for an SRAS educational program of at least six weeks in length (http://www.sras.org/programs).Study Abroad Europe ScholarshipStudy Abroad Europe scholarship offers awards that range from $250 to $1,000 per session. Fall, Spring, Academic Year and Summer students are eligible to apply. Student must have a cumulative GPA of 3.0 (B average) or higher. All applicants will be notified of scholarship decisions 3-5 weeks after the scholarship application deadline.Sustainability Laboratory Fellowship ScholarshipThe Sustainability Laboratory is now accepting applications for the pilot session of an exciting, new graduate-level summer program, The Global Sustainability Fellows Program (GSF) to be held from July 6 to July 23, 2014, at EARTH University in Costa Rica. All costs for accepted fellows will be completely covered by the GSF Program with the exception of travel to and from Costa Rica. Full tuition, room, and board for 18 day program duration will be covered.Requirements: Application and acceptance to the Global Sustainability Fellows Program. Including resume, references, short essay, and 1-2 page personal statement. Details on site.The Dr. Carlos E. Castañeda Memorial Scholarship and Correspondent Internship OpportunityAs a testament to his early struggle and life long pursuit of academic excellence, ISA offers $45,000 annually in working scholarships to be used towards ISA programs in memory of Dr. Castañeda. The Dr. Carlos E. Castañeda Memorial Scholarship and Correspondent Internship Opportunity is both a merit and financial need-based scholarship that assists students from affiliated universities with the expenses of studying abroad.The GotChosen $1000 Every Month ScholarshipGotChosen is offering a recurring monthly scholarship to help college students. The GotChosen $1000 Every Month Scholarship is easy and free to enter. A new winner is selected every month by a random drawing.The Michaela Farnum Memorial ScholarshipThe awards from this scholarship began in 2008 and $5,000 is offered annually, to be used towards ISA Summer programs. The Michaela Farnum Memorial Scholarships are both merit and financial need-based scholarships that assist students with the expenses of studying abroad during the summer terms.University Language Services Study Abroad ScholarshipCollege students: What makes you glad that you decided to study abroad?Take a photo of it for a chance to win a $500.00 college scholarship! Whether you are currently studying abroad, have studied abroad in the past or have chosen a study abroad program that you will soon begin, University Language Services wants to know what made you realize that you made the right decision. Is it a food? A building? A waterfront view? A city skyline? Whatever it is, submit a photo you've taken, along with a description of no more than 200 words on why that photo makes you glad you decided to study abroad.USAC ScholarshipsUSAC awards more than $350,000 in scholarships each year to help students with their study abroad expenses on a USAC program. We have a variety of scholarships available for students enrolled in USAC programs, including general study abroad, Member University, and site specific scholarships.Vincent I. Benander Learning Scholarship $1,000The Benander Learning Scholarship is for the Athena student who demonstrates a true love of learning and a dedication to their academic studies. The recipient can have an interest in any academic field, but must be able to show their passion and success in the field.YFU AmericansPartial Scholarship for a summer program in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay or Venezuela. Open to US high school students with freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior class standing. Students must hold a 2.0 grade point average or higher on a 4.0 scale.YFU StiftungA partial scholarship, for Key Club/Key Leader for minority students to study in Germany for a year or semester.YFU StipendiumA partial scholarship to study for a semester or year program to Germany. Open to U.S. high school students with freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior class standing. Students must hold a 3.0 grade point average or higher on a 4.0 scale. Most students will need to contribute at least half of the tuition cost. Finalists for this scholarship are selected on merit-based criteria. Students who have previously participated in a semester or year exchange in another country are not eligible for the Germany programs and scholarships.Youth For Understanding ScholarshipsYFU awards more than 300 different merit-based scholarships to students each year. Use this page to help determine which scholarships may be right for your exchange program.Yunus Emre Turkish Language Scholarship ProgramYunus Emre Turkish Language Scholarship program is designed for students who are willing to study Turkish Language. This program provides scholarships for undergraduate, masters and PhD levels. Yunus Emre Turkish Language Scholarship Program is available for non-Turkish nationals from all countries.Go Abroad China’s 2016 Summer ScholarshipsGo Abroad China is proud to offer one full scholarship and 2 partial scholarships for our summer 2016 Internship Program. The purpose of this program is to reward excellence and also help students and graduates that wish to join our Internship Program this summer (June-July-August) but are having financial difficulties. Full scholarship is worth $3,180 USD (one month internship) and partial scholarship is worth $1,590 USD (one month internship). Open to students who demonstrate their desire and ability to overcome barriers and to achieve their goals and demonstrate that an internship in China is valuable to their resume and/or future projects. Please see website for more details.Costa Rican Vacations scholarship programThe Costa Rican Vacations scholarship program recognizes and rewards innovation and ideas within the areas of tourism studies and sustainable tourism. Every year Costa Rican Vacations will award two scholarships of $1,000 each to the successful students who are interested in pursuing their studies and their career in tourism, hospitality or sustainable development. Please see website for more details.Great Global Adventure gameWin an adventure of a lifetime. See the world, make a difference & give your career a kick-start! Play 2016 edition of Great Global Adventure game, and you could win the incredible prize of one-year global adventure including up to 8 months of travel tailored for you, valuable experience at two global AXA offices, and a rewarding community project. Please see website for more details.Saltire ScholarshipOur Saltire Scholarship is a substantial programme of scholarships, offering up to 100 awards, each worth £4,000 towards tuition fees for any one year of full time study, on an Undergraduate, Masters of PhD course. This is offered on a matched funding basis between the Scottish Government and Scottish Higher Education Institutions, and is available for students from Canada, China, India, Pakistan and the USA. Please see website for more details.Sales Training and Development ScholarshipWe believe the cornerstone of success is a good education. The foundation of a good education will allow people to learn, problem solve and open countless doors. If you are looking to pursue a degree in business or teaching or have plans to own your own business we invite you to apply for our scholarship program. Each year we offer a $1000 scholarship to help a student pursue their education. Please see website for more details.The Ideal Higher Education Model for My Country writing contestOmniPapers announces an international essay contest. Write an essay on the topic “The ideal higher education model for my country.” It’s a perfect opportunity to show your creativity and writing skills with a chance to win $500! Awards will be given to 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in varying amounts. Please see website for more details.