Read, read, read!

Have you heard the story of the student who was super excited about travelling to Russia to attend ISFiT?

The Participant Group has, and last weekend they sacrificed blood, sweat and tears (or, you know, plenty of hours, for the less dramatically inclined) to start the monumental task of reading through every single application received for ISFiT 2013. Although we cannot reveal the exact number, we are dealing with something between the amount of rainy days in Trondheim (which is a lot) and the number of supporters attending an average football match (which is even more.) Or thereabouts (Fine, it’s several thousand. But that’s all we can say).

We asked this wonderful group of people about their expectations for the coming weekend, but as the saying goes, a picture says more than a thousand words, so we told them to reply using body language.

«How excited are you to start the reading?»

«And how do you think you’ll feel on Sunday evening?»

True to the spirit of ISFiT, they then proceeded to play a few games before getting to work.

Installed under the refreshing fluorescent lights of the computer room, they sat down in front of the screens, ready to begin. The mood was uplifting.

If you are imagining a peaceful, tranquil reading session; think again. Most people were not able to sit still at their desks for long before they started wandering around the room. Good applications and fascinating stories had to be shared with others, and groups of three or four gathered around a single screen to discuss an application in detail. Being solely responsible for the fate of an applicant can be daunting, and what’s better than a second (or even a third) opinion? Yay teamwork! Of course, it wasn’t just the many quality applications that gained attention. Some things did appear within applications that were simply too funny, weird or plain absurd to be ignored. Gems include selected quotes from Whitney Houston, a paragraph about frogs (?) and someone comparing the national economy to diarrhea.

And food. So much talk about food. So much, in fact, that we became hungry just reading it.

After more than an hour of reading, they’d still only read about one percent of the applications, so things weren’t looking good for the ones that had hoped to get home before  day turned to night. Luckily for these guys, some applications were much easier to discard than others, if not they’d probably still be there. Some ended up in the no-pile simply because of poor English skills. And while some had poured their heart and soul into a well-written essay, others got straight to the point — like the applicant who simply said he just wanted a free trip to Trondheim. While we appreciate the honesty, that’s never going to happen.

When we left Friday evening, a lot of work still remained before the invitations go out on the 1^st of November. Rumor has it that they didn’t stop reading until Tuesday, and apparently the mood was a lot more cheerful than anticipated. Two thumbs up for these guys!