Robyn's Personal Statement: 1st Try
Mozart wrote his first composition aged 5. Picasso first discovered his talent for painting aged 9. I penned my first poem aged 7. From a very young age, I had a love of reading and writing that differed from the other children of my age. While they giggled at the adventures of Spot the dog, I delved in the rich description of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden.
Literature has moulded my entire life and now I hope to write literature that will in turn mould the lives of others. It played an integral part in my A level courses. With politics, I could exercise my love of debating, which began when I competed in debating competitions for my school, and examine the power of rhetoric in shaping our political system.
With my love of international literature, such as Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac and Eugene Onegin by Alexander Puskin, came my decision to study French. I always felt that when novels are translated, they lose the authors lexical and syntactical crafting and so I have since become determined to be fluent in French.
I decided on English literature and language as I wanted to study how writer’s craft their work as well as analyzing it. I also loved the creative writing element of the course and the wide range of novels we would read as part of the course.
Law gave me the fundamental understanding into our legal system and thereby go on to teach it to others. I created and presented a stop and search rights assembly for year 10 and found the challenge of entertaining while teaching an exhilarating affair. While the first, this was not the last time I taught or organised teaching opportunities for students.
Two others and I won funding from sports relief to run a 12 week kickboxing class for 20 sixth formers, which we all finished with a level 1 kickboxing qualification. I was also a teaching assistant in a year 9 and 10 English class for around 8 months. For the year 9 class, I went on to prepare a GCSE preparation lesson and from the year 10 class I met two girls who I began to mentor. I loved the feeling of watching others develop from the skills you were teaching them and in the future I hope to become a tutor on an Arvon writing course.
Given my love of all things literary, it will come as no surprise that when I discovered this course my heart not only skipped a beat but completed a triathlon. The idea that my time at university would be spent reading and exploring the works of a wide range of authors as well as writing and developing my own made me determined to do whatever it took to ensure I would be reading my name on the top of an acceptance letter.
This course is perfect for helping me to achieve my dream of becoming a successful novelist and poet. I have taken many steps towards this dream, especially since starting sixth form. I have been on both an Arvon foundation and Poetry School writing course and subscribed to The Writer’s Magazine. I created Home Grown Writing, a blog in which I post all that I write from poetry to gonzo journalism articles. My part time job has helped me to develop my article writing skills as I write legal articles for a barrister. More recently, I was published in an e-anthology, entered several poetry competitions and was chosen to be the news and creative writing editor for the school magazine. I also read a large variety of books from Maureen Freely’s The Other Rebecca to Tolstoy’s War & Peace.
One experience, however, has prepared me more than most for university life and the demands that a university course would require. I was chosen out of 60 applicants by the retiring US ambassador and the Windsor Fellowship to be part of a group of 12 young people on a US-UK leadership and dialogue programme. It involved months of residential weekends with 100% attendance, research and presentations in order to prepare us for a 2 week trip to the US which we spent with Americans and Iraqis, using communication to understand each other’s faiths and cultures and then present our new knowledge in a presentation back in London to our stakeholders. This experience gave me a never-ending list of skills, including leadership, communication, independent learning, teamwork and the ability to balance heavy workloads with a social life.
This course is everything I could possibly dream of and now I am looking to you to take my raw natural skill and chisel and shape it into a profound, undeniable talent. In return, I pledge here and now to exceed every expectation you have of students on your course.
Robyn
Literature has moulded my entire life and now I hope to write literature that will in turn mould the lives of others. It played an integral part in my A level courses. With politics, I could exercise my love of debating, which began when I competed in debating competitions for my school, and examine the power of rhetoric in shaping our political system.
With my love of international literature, such as Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac and Eugene Onegin by Alexander Puskin, came my decision to study French. I always felt that when novels are translated, they lose the authors lexical and syntactical crafting and so I have since become determined to be fluent in French.
I decided on English literature and language as I wanted to study how writer’s craft their work as well as analyzing it. I also loved the creative writing element of the course and the wide range of novels we would read as part of the course.
Law gave me the fundamental understanding into our legal system and thereby go on to teach it to others. I created and presented a stop and search rights assembly for year 10 and found the challenge of entertaining while teaching an exhilarating affair. While the first, this was not the last time I taught or organised teaching opportunities for students.
Two others and I won funding from sports relief to run a 12 week kickboxing class for 20 sixth formers, which we all finished with a level 1 kickboxing qualification. I was also a teaching assistant in a year 9 and 10 English class for around 8 months. For the year 9 class, I went on to prepare a GCSE preparation lesson and from the year 10 class I met two girls who I began to mentor. I loved the feeling of watching others develop from the skills you were teaching them and in the future I hope to become a tutor on an Arvon writing course.
Given my love of all things literary, it will come as no surprise that when I discovered this course my heart not only skipped a beat but completed a triathlon. The idea that my time at university would be spent reading and exploring the works of a wide range of authors as well as writing and developing my own made me determined to do whatever it took to ensure I would be reading my name on the top of an acceptance letter.
This course is perfect for helping me to achieve my dream of becoming a successful novelist and poet. I have taken many steps towards this dream, especially since starting sixth form. I have been on both an Arvon foundation and Poetry School writing course and subscribed to The Writer’s Magazine. I created Home Grown Writing, a blog in which I post all that I write from poetry to gonzo journalism articles. My part time job has helped me to develop my article writing skills as I write legal articles for a barrister. More recently, I was published in an e-anthology, entered several poetry competitions and was chosen to be the news and creative writing editor for the school magazine. I also read a large variety of books from Maureen Freely’s The Other Rebecca to Tolstoy’s War & Peace.
One experience, however, has prepared me more than most for university life and the demands that a university course would require. I was chosen out of 60 applicants by the retiring US ambassador and the Windsor Fellowship to be part of a group of 12 young people on a US-UK leadership and dialogue programme. It involved months of residential weekends with 100% attendance, research and presentations in order to prepare us for a 2 week trip to the US which we spent with Americans and Iraqis, using communication to understand each other’s faiths and cultures and then present our new knowledge in a presentation back in London to our stakeholders. This experience gave me a never-ending list of skills, including leadership, communication, independent learning, teamwork and the ability to balance heavy workloads with a social life.
This course is everything I could possibly dream of and now I am looking to you to take my raw natural skill and chisel and shape it into a profound, undeniable talent. In return, I pledge here and now to exceed every expectation you have of students on your course.
Robyn
0 comments:
Post a Comment