Hello The Internet! My name is Oscar, current UCAS applicant and new blogger. Well, not new, it’s just taken me two weeks
to find the time to write my first blog post. I could possibly have done it
last weekend but I had two research papers due on the Monday afterwards as well
as two others later during the week, two tests and two exams. Also somewhere in
there was a music festival in Singapore, which may not have been the best idea
under such a work load.
Anyway, I’ve been advised that a good way to start might be
to introduce myself a little and give some information about my applications
and aspirations, so I’ll try and make myself sound like I’m not dull and frigid,
or pretentious. You’ll probably get one of the two. Sorry.
I’m an International Baccalaureate student in my
final/senior year, currently taking higher level History, English literature, and
French as well as three standard level classes. With those, I’m hoping to go
into classical history and archaeology, much to the chagrin of the rest of the
Model UN team who are all aspiring politicians. They’re convinced that I’ll be
wasting my time “digging with spoons”, but the joke’s on them; while they’re
sitting in their nice cushy office jobs on six figure salaries and changing the
world, I’m going to be the one camping in a wet field with a metal detector and
trowel. I think we know who the real winner is here.
I’m the sort of student who takes work a bit too seriously
and still manages to be about average, who gets really enthusiastic about some
courses and does well in them while neglecting others, who telephones large
tea-making corporations at two in the morning to ask them to give me the precise
quantity of caffeine in one tea bag for a “critical research paper”, and who is
advertising himself well in this paragraph just in case any of the universities
he’s applied to are reading this.
I currently live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, an absolutely wonderful
place to be except for this year’s haze. Before here I lived in France for
twelve years and went to school in Geneva, Switzerland, and before that a
measly four years in England, meaning I know nothing about the country I’m “from”,
and will have to spend a while getting to know it while at university.
As for my applications, I’ve sent five out through UCAS to
Oxford, Durham, St. Andrews, Exeter and York, and I’m leaning towards the idea
of sending a few applications out in France if there’s still time. The process
so far has been absolutely amazing; I sent my apps out on October third and
have had four replies so far – three affirmative, one invitation to interview –
which would have been pretty much impossible without our school counsellor and
the guidance from UCAS (but I won’t prattle on about them now, I’m sure UCAS
will be kicking me to compliment them more in future).
I’ll be in Oxford next week for an interview, so perhaps I
can do some blogging from the field, which I’m sure is the sort of thing UCAS
wants me to be doing, but other than that I’ll just be rambling on here every
now and then about applications and work and student life and archaeology and
literature and whatever takes my fancy. I’m sure that all two of you reading
this blog, and the one of you that stays around for the rest, will find me
slightly boring but just good enough to use as an excuse to procrastinate.
Everyone else in the world is probably more like me and doesn’t actually read
UCAS blogs, but hey, no one’s judging you.
Till whenever,
Oscar.
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