showing up, even on the hard days
The university stage ended April 30th. It is now June 11th in Korea. NIIED has said nothing. My best friend is waiting. The flights keep getting more expensive. And someone finally emailed them — this week, they said. This week.
The email came at 2 a.m. I was asleep. Some things don't wait for you to be ready.
The group chat keeps updating. The list keeps growing. I keep refreshing a page that has nothing new to show me. Two days left.
I filled twelve pages with possible questions. I practiced until I almost lost my voice. And then the director said two words that brought my soul back into my body.
I said I would write here when April came. April came. This is what happened at 4am when I finally opened the email I was afraid to open.
Eight months of work, two packages, one prayer at a DHL counter. And then: nothing to do but wait. This is what that actually feels like.
The checklist alone will scare you. Then the forms, the copies, the permissions. Here is the honest guide to GKS documents I wish I had found before I started.
Apostilles, certified translations, DHL to Korea, two full sets of documents — I spent around $842 USD just to submit my GKS application. Honest breakdown with real numbers.
Eight months of rewriting essays, 80 universities to research, and a lot of uncertainty. Here is the honest version of what applying to the GKS scholarship actually looks like.