Well my fever just gone down since yesterday, should be fine.
Most scholarships do look at the academic results, but I think this is the easy part of the scholarship application.
The worst part is the "unknown criteria" that they use to filter the students they wish to offer the scholarship. I don't know what are those qualities that they look for to be honest. Like for example, what does it mean to have "leadership qualities", "independent", "charismatic", and so on, I don't see how they can determine whether a person have these qualities just by a few rounds of interviews. (Worse still, I don't even know whether these are the only qualities they look for!)
Moreover, I never even passed the first round in any scholarship application, that means they rejected me based on the online submission form I filled in. I wonder what is the reason why I got rejected by all the scholarships that I had spent days to complete... What is the "qualities" that I am actually lacking?
School with less academics tend to have less homeworks and thus I am never keen on going to a good school. I believe that not even the school or the teachers can affect my results, only my hardwork will. So I went to a relatively "bad" school for my primary and secondary. I don't see any "bad" from it, in fact the benefit I got is that I have a lot more time to do my interests, instead of attending to the huge pile of homework/assignments everyday.
I think that in such schools, the students are less focused on academics, hence they have more time to socialize? This is possibly why you might find them more friendlier? In any case, it's good for you to have a better enviroment to study, and a big factor comes from your classmates!
I never went to a schooltrip before, so I can't tell you to have fun since I never experience one, but I hope you are at least looking forward to it. Sounds like it's a good way to de-stress, and if you can try to make friends wih your classmates!