I signed up for the finding your voice sessions after school to gain an insight on how to write an essay for universities. It was interesting because I got to gain an insight into the different ways you write essays for US universities and UK universities. In each session, there were 15 minutes of free writing, where we were asked to write whatever we want regardless of grammar or spellings. We were told to “show” not “tell” by using descriptive words and allowing the audience to imagine the situation. Additionally, we were asked to write whatever came to our mind so we wrote about ourselves. This exercise was refreshing for me because in IB, you are expected to write academic essays without using personal pronounce. I was able to find that, free-writing is a great way to discover your thought process. It often allowed me to connect the dots because I often do not have enough time to dig into a thought and explore it by relating it to my academic or social life. Hence, I think I can use it as a way for me to start writing my personal statement over the summer because it is important to realise and explore my interest as well as my passion for foreign affairs.
