Sunday 16 February 2014

Motivation Letter

Dear Sir/Madam,

As I contemplated writing this letter, I had not foreseen the difficulties I would run into. The purpose of this letter is to tell you why I want to study abroad, and in some way or another I have to convince you to let me go to the university of my choice. Now I think you've read all the clichés before, which makes writing this extra difficult for me. As I sit here, staring at a blank plage, I cannot contrive a single sentence that isn't anything you haven't read before. Or well I can, but I hardly think that would land me a spot on the next train to Britain. So now let me change it up a bit. Let me be brutally honest with you. You guys should send me to the University of Kent. I could tell you now how much I want to go there, how it would look good on my resume, how it would improve my English accent, and how terrific the experience would be for me. These reasons are of course inherently good reasons, and I believe these things with all my heart. However, I hardly believe these reasons are any different from the next person's. So why would you send me to England? Well, because I want to go. I want to go to England because I've been in love with the country since forever (cliché). I love their weird habits and values, the way they eat sunday roast and weird pudding thingies that are actually some kind of bready-substance (cliché). I love the language, and all it's imperfections and the way that it does not make any sense at all (cliché). I love how the British treasure the remnants of their past, how they do not knock down 5 billion year old cottages but keep them alive and charge you 25 pounds to come anywhere near it (cliché). I want to spend my money on that. I want to spend all my money on having a good time, meeting people from all over the world, and spending even more money with them. I will stop summing up reasons for me to go - as it's all becoming a bit too much like 10 Things I Hate about You - to again come to the conclusion that all these reasons also add up to one big cliché. It seems I cannot escape it. I want to go to the United Kingdom. You are the people deciding who can go. Maybe you don't even look at the reasons people have to go, maybe you just look at their grammar, their spelling, how they sell themselves. I would lose in that last section, as selling myself was never one of my strongest points. I guess by writing this letter, and sending it in, I am putting all my money on you guys appreciating my honesty. Because when it really comes to why I want to go to the University of Kent, there are certainly some boring reasons I can write down here, but there's also that tiny voice in my head that's asking me 'yeah, why do you want to go?' But as you guys are academics, you don't rely on hunches, on feelings. So I won't tell you that the city of Canterbury just speaks to me. Instead I'll tell you about it's wonderful courses, it's proximity to London, and the cultural attraction it has to me. Now doesn't that make me sound like I know what I'm babbling about? Yeah, I thought so. So here it is judges, my motivation letter. It's a whole lot of nonsense with the hidden message of 'pick me, pick me'!

With Kind Regards,
Bonnie van den Bergh

Friday 14 February 2014

Bout That Life

It's been soooooooooooo long.
SO long since I've written. Two months. IT WAS FREAKING LAST YEAR I wrote last.
I am ashamed of myself for this now.

But I have some good reasons :D

I've been exceptionally busy for the last.. two months? First of all there were these exam weeks, and then I had a one week actual vacation (which was awesome), and then classes started again. So first I was busy, then I was lazy, and I went right back to busy again. The fact that I haven't had time to write also means that there have been cool things I did which I now can't talk about because that would make this post even messier than my previous ones. I really want to ramble about some really nice films I watched - 12 Years a Slave, August: Osage County, The Wolf of Wallstreet - but I guess I'll make another post about those because I also still want to do a watchlist thingy and a blog about must-see films (according to me of course), and I guess those will be on that. So yeah I'm just gonna let that slide for now.

What I do really want to mention is that I watched Coriolanus, which was absolutely lovely (yeah I know so pretentious). For those of you who are not acquainted with this tongue-twisting phenomenon, it's a Shakespeare play. Of course I first heard of it on Tumblr, as everyone's big friend Tom Hiddleston is in it. Now I am not going to act like that was not a reason to see it. However, I saw the Hollow Crown - or rather parts of it - a year and a half ago or something, and Hiddleston is in this also. I absolutely loved it, the acting was brilliant - I should not forget to mention Ben Whishaw's acting brilliance too - so I rather wanted to see more of Tom doing Shakespeare. Then there's the fact that I know nothing about Shakespeare whatsoever, except for what I've seen which is really little, and I want to become acquainted with his work. You'd think that as an English Language and Culture student I'd come across his work by now, but unfortunately the only Shakespeare course is set for year three. So yeah, I feel really ignorant and want to educate myself. So I watched Coriolanus. And it was brilliant. It has such an enormous amount of sass - as you'd expect - and after getting used to the archaic language use the play really sucks you in. So yeah go see it! (if you can get your hands on it one way or another, if you know what I mean).

In other news, I have to write my motivation letter for studying abroad this weekend. I know I've talked about this before, and back then I was really set on going to Leeds to study. However, as I've found out that I can only attened Leeds Metropolitan and not Leeds University, the tables have turned. I am completely set on going to the University of Kent, and fingers crossed I can actually go there. They have some of the most amazing classes - or at least they sound awesome. I got the green light basically to do whatever I want to, so I'm definitely choosing some film study courses. We have only 2 weeks left to make our final decisions so the pressure is on. And the competition. So yeah I'm writing that damned letter this weekend and I'm a bit anxious about how to go about it, although it's probably less of a big deal than it sounds like (but you can never be too sure).

Well, this was fun.
Also, I'm a bit obsessed with this atm, IT'S SO GOOD: