Sample History Personal Statement
History has been a keen interest of mine from a young age, and being engaged with politics and sociology through my involvement with my school’s newspaper, reading Politics and Eastern European Studies is the logical progression of my academic career and will play a major role in the attainment of my ambition of working within political journalism at HVG. SSEES, being an internationally renowned educational and research institution, has attracted me, and the diverse learning opportunities and extracurricular offerings of UCL excite me greatly; I hope to delve into these head on, optimizing my time abroad, generating a diverse social group and experiencing the many prospects on offer in London whilst developing my pre existing academic and personal skill set alongside learning new competences.
My interest in history has been a constant in my school career, and since beginning this subject I have nurtured my curiosity by reading widely and immersing myself in issues that surround Eastern Europe both politically and historically. I have a broad attraction to both domestic and more regional studies and hope to continue nurturing this interest at university by taking modules in Hungarian literature, political ideas and philosophy and history modules that allow me to put the status of Hungary into perspective with correlation to Russia. By studying PEES at UCL, I am hoping to gain knowledge and understanding of the issues that define and restrain the area I come from and that I will return to to work.
At school I proactively developed various skills within several different avenues that will be beneficial during further education. I am both a vocal and thoughtful student who has striven to participate in class, to stimulate debate and to input opinion whilst simultaneously listening to others. Working in groups and individually has allowed me to hone my teamwork and leadership skills and I have learnt that compromise is essential; my communication skills have been bolstered through my experiences and I highly anticipate utilising these whilst at university. I hope to continue learning from the different academic scenarios I will be challenged with and look forward to positively overcoming these.
I am highly self-motivated, and took on the responsibility of editing the school newspaper; I assigned research tasks for my peers, reviewed articles and pulled these together to produce our weekly publication. During this time I learnt the importance of organisation and that of workload prioritisation; because of this I am fully prepared for the rigors of further study and feel I will thrive in a pressurised environment when working to deadlines. The newspaper focussed upon political issues, amongst other topics, and from this my interest in political journalism has sprung. I would like to actively contribute to Pi Magazine and to start a newspaper within SSEES centring upon Eastern Europe into which anyone who is engaged or interested in the politics and history of this region may contribute.
I have also worked as an Apple Macintosh Technician, a role that requires critical thinking and good judgement, supporting a wide variety of software and hardware, troubleshooting issues related to these. Being a customer-facing role, I learnt excellent interpersonal skills and have thrived in giving advice in a professional and helpful manner. All of the aforementioned skills will aid me hugely in my journey through further education, and I hope to build upon these constantly, adding more aptitudes to my already strong skill set.
The academic prospects of SSEES are very exciting and I hope to learn new languages alongside my current fluencies; this will help me when researching primary sources and also when accessing the many archived newspapers SSEES library holds. I am an outgoing, fearless, self-starting quick-learner who is keen to learn, and I highly anticipate throwing myself into further education and involving myself fully with university life.
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