So… It’s Boxing Day and I’m sat eating a Terry’s Dark Chocolate Orange whilst watching Ab Fab. As this is my first post, I think it would be good to have a little look over what a year 2012 has been!
It all started when Mrs Haughton handed me a little leaflet featuring an American flag and the headline ‘US Summer School’. I opened it, looked inside and saw that I was eligible to apply and naturally I did, never did I think anything would actually come of it! Thus, there I was one Tuesday night, refreshing the inbox of my emails when I saw I had one from a sender entitled ‘USA’.
I opened it and saw the first word of the first line, ‘Congratulations’, before screaming and running down the stairs in a moment of euphoria to shout at my family “I’ve got onto the US Summer School”. At that point, I had no idea of just how much this Summer School would change my life…
The first residential of the Summer School was held at Mill Hill and I was completely shocked to discover just how targeted the programme was to applying to US colleges and universities. My whole Summer became centred around this most fantastic opportunity, the chance to study in the US! The week In America at Yale University was absolutely fantastic, a complete whirlwind of excitement, campus tours, visits to New York and I must say, one of the best trips of my life. That week, I made so many fantastic friends and saw things I never thought I would. That’s not to say that summer wasn’t hard work, because it most definitely was, but it was work that had a goal, although I never thought I would achieve it.
I discovered Colorado College on the College Board website and was immediately struck by its unique curriculum structuring. As I researched more and more into the college, I began to realise just what a fantastic place it was, in a fantastic location with a genuinely diverse and interesting student body. Something that was important to me when looking at schools to apply was the actual size of the college and CC, with only 2000 Students, seemed to be the perfect place for me. Thus, I organised an interview with Emily, CC’s admissions office in charge of reading applications from Europe, in London. It was a fantastic interview, more like an informal chat, and came away with a really good idea of the ‘fit’ at CC. I was inspired to apply Early Decision!
Although the wait to discover whether I’d been accepted seemed long and agonising, in reality it was only about a month and I found out towards the beginning of December that CC had accepted me AND awarded me a full scholarship! I cannot articulate the rapture of emotion which swept through me upon hearing this news! I am just so incredibly excited!
So, I’m on the verge of a new year, one that promises to be incredibly exciting and full of adventure. This blog will be my way of documenting the run up to my travel and study at CC. However, it’s going to be more than that. I’m going to treat this blog as a bit of a diary where I will write up things that are either interesting to me or to my friends and family, like an ongoing newsreel of my journey in America at Colorado College!
Speak Soon!
P.s. Find some photos of the summer school via the US-UK Fulbright Commission Account on Flicker: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usukfulbright
