4000 Characters

This is the very first piece I have written for my creative writing portfolio to send to East Anglia. (It's a monologue.)

[Spoken by a girl of 17-18 in a t-shirt and jeans.]

Extremely happy and excited, using big gestures and movements

For my 7^th birthday, my father bought me a chemistry set with 100 different experiments. That’s what it said on the box: learn to make colourful crystals, find out how rockets burn with colour, separate and analyse substances! Really it was just squeezing lemon juice into grape juice and watching the lemon juice turn red, but to the 7 year old me it was magic and from then on science became my life.

Body language completely changes to one of seriousness, bottled anger and frustration. Voice has a dark, cynical tone. Voice constantly builds to a point of shouting, but then returns to calm as she controls herself.

The teachers tell you to start with an anecdote. It makes you seem more...friendly. Likeable. Human. But all I can think is that anecdote cost me 406 characters. 406 characters lost trying to prove that chemistry has been a love for all of my life when really I much preferred the Barbie I got for my birthday and hardly touched the chemistry set. But that is just what happens when you write these statements: truth and lies blur and entwine until you can no longer remember which is which. If you tell the truth they won’t want you. In truth very few people have always loved and always wanted to study that course. Most just stumble across it when deciding what to do with the rest of their lives. But if you tell all lies, you’ll get caught. The boy who cried “I read it!” is the most common University fable to date. What you have to do is find the right mix of look-at-me lies and touching truths and you’ve got yourself a place.

You have 4000 characters for this cunning persuasion. That includes spaces and full stops. They charge you for wanting the admissions department to take breaths when they read. Some people try to gain a character here and there by ‘accidentally’ forgetting to put a space or missing out a full stop but it doesn’t work. One single grammatical or spelling error and BAM...there goes your statement in the bin. Those 4000 characters become the haunting, taunting, oh-so-daunting nightmare of every student. I know a girl who wants to do Scandinavian studies and English Literature. She had to write it six times. That’s 258 characters gone. Sure you can pick up little tricks like using an ampersand instead of writing ‘and’ or saying ‘this course’ instead of the full course name but it isn’t enough. I know a boy who studied Government and Politics, Philosophy, English language and literature and Business studies. He had to say each subject twice. That’s 712 characters squandered. And he wanted to study Business Studies and Marketing, the poor sod. After the anecdote, course name and his A level subjects, he had 200 characters left. No-where near enough space to show what a well-rounded individual he was. That’s the other thing they tell you to do: prove that you are more than just grades with all of your extra-curricular activities. Here’s where more deception comes into play. People pick up sports and instruments and volunteering becomes their life. They pretend to care about old people, children, the disabled, the environment and charities but really they resent using their Saturdays and while they shovel mud and pick up rubbish and change a child or old woman’s nappy, they pray to God that this gets them a place and all becomes worth it.

My Mum couldn’t believe it when I told her. Mimicks her mothers voice and shocked body posture “All these lies, surely University’s will see through it all and only want the truthful people?” Bless her. She didn’t go to University. Maybe my Mum is right, they do see through it and take you anyway for your admirable attempt at ambidexterity (learning fancy words is another must), who knows. The student certainly doesn’t, and that’s the whole point. We know absolutely NOTHING about what they want, except that what they want is not what we have to offer. I could use my 4000 characters to be honest and say that I really want to do this course and I know it would be perfect for me and I hear the night life is fantastic at your University and I just want to get the hell away from my parents and I work pretty hard and am mainly punctual and a nice person and will be a great student and please-oh-please won’t you give me a place? But 10 zillion other applicants will say the same and you become lost in the messy mass of rejection, begging to be saved by the power of Clearing. It’s all about standing out from the crowd. In a way personal statements are the best preparation for life: you learn that no-one will want you just the way you are; you need to persuade them that you are what they need. Bosses, our husbands and wives, our children, our friends will all need persuading. Contorting the truth is the shotgun you need for survival in the Jungle of your future and the 4000 characters are your bullets. Use them wisely.

Robyn