Gawaine
Class of 2022, University College London
When I was in junior high school, I was a problematic child. I was tired of the rules and regulations of the public middle school. I hated my life there but couldn’t do anything about it. One day, my mother said to me, why don’t we try SCIE, so the four years that changed my life came quietly.
When I first came to SCIE, I felt that everything was so different. I chose Japanese, Computer Science, and History as my G level courses. I couldn’t believe I was learning things in classes that my former teachers dismissed as “wacky tricks”. I also couldn’t believe that I was free to use electronic devices in high school; cell phones, iPads, computers, all became essential parts of my life. Of course, with freedom comes temptation. In SCIE, no one would urge me to do anything. Even the submission date of important documents of the college application is our own responsibility; study, grades, activities, no one will discipline us with a small whip like an instructor, we shall only rely on our own self-disciplinary and self-consciousness to constrain us. It was precisely because I didn’t have enough self-control that my G level life in the SCIE was not smooth sailing; the sudden freedom caught me off guard, and the self-imposed personality that was oppressed in junior high school was released; I was reading novels and playing video games all day long; when my classmates kept themselves organized and good looking, I had long hair, dyed it blond, and wore strange clothes. I used my maverick as a benchmark for self-show… Fortunately before it was too late, maybe with the help of the environment, or maybe a certain point in adolescence passed suddenly, I realized that I needed to be responsible for my future. So I started to work hard, and after a few months of hard work I finally achieved a satisfactory IGCSE result, drawing the best possible end to my imperfect G level life. However, I knew that I was lucky because the effort I putted in didn’t deserve these grades.
If life in G level was like a freshman week before school starts, life in A level is where the hard learning really begins. Maybe it’s by nature, maybe I was not fully grown up, and if so I’m not grown up even now, and I wasn’t fully committed to my studies in grade A as well. During my A level course selection, I found that some seemingly random course selections in G level affected the subjects I chose for college admissions in A level (for example, if I did not study economics in G level, choosing economics in A level would become difficult, etc.), in the end I can only laugh bitterly and say that I didn’t handle it well in the first and second grades. In A level, other students around me started to study hard, participated in various exams and competitions, read professional books, etc. However, I still maintained the previous study habits. So after the end of the AS level, I only got a just so so result.
In Year A2, my application season started. I can say I successfully entered my dream school UCL to study the major I wanted to study now, but my fate with UCL originated from a conversation with my roommate during G1. At that time, the two of us were walking on the trail in Huanggang Village. I asked him “Which university is your dream school”, and he told me it was Imperial College. He asked me the same question, but I didn’t know. At that time, I had no plan for the future at all, just like the protagonist in “Hear the Wind Sing” aimlessly thinking about life and the future. He told me: “Your goals should be higher. In SCIE, if you study hard, you can get into UCL.” I knew that I was not a person who would study hard, so I told myself at that time, that well, my dream school is UCL! With poor AS grades and predicted grades, I started my application season. Between August 2021 and January 2022, I revised a total of 25 drafts of my personal statement. Among them, there were many cases where I thought the essay was already very good, and the counsellor requested me to rewrite the whole article. Writing essays is a very difficult task. During that time, I wanted to give up, but my friend told me that “Ounatheshow” means that if you want to be recognized in Europe for your essay, you must first do it within the school and become a master. In the end, with my own perseverance, and more importantly, with the encouragement and help by my classmates and teachers and friends, I completed an essay that I am very satisfied with. It was this essay that made me apply for UCL with my bad grades successful. I finally submitted the application in January, although I was one step later than the other students, but with the extra time, I did the best in my application materials to the best of my ability, maybe It was these extra few months that helped me managed to gain UCL’s favor. School selection and major selection also have an important influence on college applications. In addition to essays, the unpopularity of my major was also a key factor in helping me apply to a good university. If you tired of competing with others, then just quit it, sometimes some tiny schemes may be more useful than hard working. Waiting for offers was always a painful process. I refreshed my mailbox dozens of times a day just for the emails from the universities. In the end, I was lucky. After two insurance schools (Manchester and Leeds ) sent me offers soon, UCL sent me an offer at the beginning of February, and then Warwick gave me the offer in March. At this point, my application season was actually finished. There was still no information from the LSE, and finally tole me on the UCAS update deadline (May 19) that I was rejected because the content of my PS did not match my major, although it was said that this was the only small part of the application season, but in fact, when I was choosing LSE as a UCAS choice, I didn’t have any illusions that I would be enrolled by LSE. I just thought that I would have regrets if I didn’t give it a try. Cause opportunity comes once in a lifetime.
However, studying and applying for universities are only a small part of the life of SCIE. More importantly, SCIE has made me a better person, a part of a great atmosphere, and prepared me for future challenges and opportunities. ready. When I first came to SCIE, I was a terrible person. I was surly, irritable, arrogant, egotistic and didn’t know how to deal with people, or didn’t understand anything; things that should be suppressed grow savagely, but things that should grow were blocked by me,I sealed it up; when I left SCIE, although there are still a lot of stuff to improve, I can realize that I have become a better person, a person who knows how to get along with others, a person who is more able to be loved by himself and by others, people around me and people accepted by society. When I came to SCIE, I was a middle-school sick teenager with only video games and the Internet in my life. When I left the SCIE, I fully discovered my hobbies and dreams. I wanted to be a writer, so I practiced writing for four years and wrote a public account. , and I contributed my own article to the school journal and finally got it published; the course of SCIE made me fall in love with Haruki Murakami’s works. I did a lot of research in a few years, and by the time I graduated, I was already giving other People are in class, and the content was the works of Haruki Murakami, etc. I also had a lot of opportunities to meet the future and get in touch with many different people and things. However, what I should be most grateful for is the the atmosphere and envoroxet of love I felt in SCIE. Unlike the teachers in my junior high school who encouraged students to report each other, brutally attacked students in words, and stifled students’ individuality, many teachers from SCIE helped me at an important and critical stage in my life, not only teaching us knowledge, but also dealing with or life correctly.
In junior high school I was always alone because of my incompatibility, characters and institutional reasons. In SCIE, I have met a group of like-minded partners, most of whom will go to the UK with me to continue our studies; I have met my seniors who take great care of us. When I need help, seniors always help me without hesitation, and donate their experiences and knowledges to help me; I have also met many juniors, and I have imitated my seniors, help them as much as I can. I have no reason not to believe that the juniors will also help their juniors in the same way; I have met many people who admire and cherish each other with me, and have many stories with them; I have met the same hobbies as me, friends who play football, I have met friends who also like literature; in SCIE, I also have the chance to communicate with the people that I am most grateful to: my parents. I used to have many complaints about them, but now I understand the hardness of my parents, and I am very grateful to them… This is the four years I have been in SCIE. I think back to the old school gate where I stepped into Shuiwei for the first time, and then I think of the last time I stepped out the school, going out of the iron gate of the new campus of Antuo Hill, it seems that these two moments were only a moment apart. This is my four years. I believe that your four years are as splendid, or even more exciting than mine. I wish you all the best. Hope all seniors and schoolmates from our year can have good time in colleges and working place and wish all the juniors have a good application season and examination results and go to your dream school. Never say good bye to everyone.
