The International Student Blog

I’m flying right now but, for the last week, I wasn’t able to sleep properly. I was thinking about how I could have improved my Travel Video Contest submission a bit more. If I’m being honest, after watching the other contestants, I was a little nervous about this contest. Then, on a late-night call, I was congratulated for winning the Grand Prize in the 2019 Travel Video Contest organized by InternationalStudent.com. I was shocked, excited, and jumping everywhere, but still silent since my roommates were sleeping. I rushed to the balcony and gave my cousin a call to tell him everything. The thing about my cousin is that he is one of the few people who supported me while I was making the transition from computer science to visual effects. I felt like screaming at the top of my lungs, “In your face!!!”, to the people who doubted my decision to drop out of my computer science program. It was an extraordinary experience. My heart felt like it was floating in the air.

Now, I want to talk a little about how I planned to execute that video. The contest started on September 1, 2019, but I found out about it on September 24th. I was running late, so I pulled out my notebook and started to storyboard ideas right away. My first ideas were exactly like many other finalists and after trying to film them, I felt no sense of creativity. I discarded everything and restarted. Finally, I was able to create something which I felt was creative enough. I started filming, designing, creating animations, etc. By October 11th, I finished the whole video. But one thing was missing: narration. I recorded the voiceover about fifty times to communicate my emotions. Finally, on October 13th, I submitted my completed video and then started the painful journey of waiting. Who would have thought, I would actually end up winning the whole contest.

It is still very hard to believe that my video, “Jumping Borders”, was appreciated so much. I’m very grateful for this opportunity and winning this contest will strengthen my resumé and CV. I received love and appreciation from all my family and friends. They are proud of me. 

Although my parents didn’t stop me in pursuing my goals, they were skeptical at first about my decision to drop out of the computer science program. This is understandable since all of their friends and family weren’t ready to understand this change. Eventually, I proved one of my dad’s sayings right, which is, “Do whatever you like (not a crime, of course), even if you are interested in collecting rocks, be the best in it and the world will appreciate it automatically.” Because of my win, I got to be in more than ten newspapers and I was recognized by so many people across my hometown.

Right now, I’ve planned to visit my hometown to celebrate with my parents a little. Then, I will go back to Pune, India to start taking part in more scholarships and try some internships too. I want to get as much experience I can have before going to Canada. 

Thank you to the whole InternationalStudent.com team for your help and appreciation.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 3rd, 2019 at 8:55 am and is filed under International Student. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.