Personal Statment (END OF G9)

I have lived in Singapore for my whole life, being in UWC since grade one. Highschool is the daunting new level to challenge, a blue shirt. This year has been a good experience for me, developing in many aspects of school like academics and even maturing a little bit. I’ve had a lot of growth in my not only academics, but other aspects of my UWCSEA education like service/activities and outdoor education. I set some goals for myself at the start of the year, for example take part in more service and take part in more activities to be creative. So far, I’ve been able to achieve this.

I set these goals for myself because of my experience in middle school, the flaws that I felt I should adress. Throughout my years in UWC, I’ve never really done any global concern service, but rather almost completely on the college scale. I’ve always wanted to try, and so I set that as one of my goals. The next goal that I had for myself was to be more organized and procrastinate less. In middle school I was a very average and quiet student in class, getting straight 5’s with occasional 6/7s( it might seem like i’m labelling but I know enough that numbers aren’t everything). Although I don’t think focusing solely on grades is appropriate, it is something that I wanted to focus on this year. Especially with the pressure of growing up and the whole university talk my parents had given me. Primary and middle school was very stress-free, rarely stacking us with homework. But of course in high school this changes quite drastically. I think one of the other major goals that I’ve had for more than this year, was to be more social and outgoing. Like I had mentioned before I’ve always been a quiet kid and rarely talking in class and I think I was able to change in this area quite a lot.

So just how did I change my self? This year I signed up for many activities I normally wouldn’t, one was MUN and another was Cancer Awareness a global concern. Cancer awareness was a new experience for me. Like I had said before, although I was in UWC for all those years I had not really participated in a GC. MUN was a completely new experience for me, and it made me very uncomfortable at first. The idea of having to go up in front of 50 other students to speak about a significant world topic I don’t understand much about. But even then I was still able to develop my social skills. This was transferred in class as I was able to really start to express my self vocally in class discussions and others. I’ve learnt to be more confident about talking in class and I think this has actually benefited me in my learning, being able to communicate to check my understanding in a more direct and verbal method. Many of the goals that I had set for myself this year have already been achieved. I’ve developed a lot as a person and I think that I should probably start thinking about how I might want my goals to change. Grade 10 although similar to Grade 9 is still completely different with the added stress of the IGCSE exams.

This year although I did try out for the badminton team, I wasn’t able to get in even after the preseason training. I’ve worked hard to improve my fitness over the last 4 months and will try out again next year, but I also have to take into consideration how much time I put into exams and other activities.

There are many things that I have developed but obviously there is always room for improvement. I think I want to keep up my goals that I set for the next year as well and they keep up what I am able to do. I think that I don’t particularly have any new goals for myself right now, but now that I think about it I probably could have signed up for the NYAA because I had already committed myself to do basically all the requirements of the NYAA. Overall, this year’s been a good one.