Introduction

Hello and a warm welcome to my blog! Thank you for stopping by – hopefully you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing! As you might have guessed, my name is Dora. I have just turned 22. I was born and raised (and educated until the age of 19) in a small town in the south of Hungary, relatively near the Serbian border. After three years of uncertainty over my career, I am elated to be able to write that I am currently studying linguistics at the University of Amsterdam a university in Budapest studying English and American studies, but I have always hoped and intended to study (and then work) abroad, and this year, this dream of mine is finally coming true. I’m the only girl in a set of triplets. One of my brothers and I have been blind since birth, and my other brother is partially sighted. However, blindness certainly doesn’t stop me [or my brother, who is now at the academy of music studying classical organ!] from having big plans for the future and contributing to society the best we can. Based on what I have heard from others, as well as first-hand experience, pity towards the blind is unfortunately very prominent in modern society. Concerns range from common tasks such as eating, through to and including activities the fully sighted often struggle with, such as using a computer. This topic will be discussed in a separate post. I have been interested in language(s), literature and music for as long as I can remember. This is partly thanks to our mother reading to us as children (which made me a real bookworm), as well as the excellent musical training and the education which we were fortunate enough to receive despite our less than ideal financial background and other circumstances. I studied piano for 12 years and classical singing for two years. During those 12 years, my brother and I took part in as many regional and national music (mostly piano) competitions as possible, both solo and together, and achieved excellent results. I did once have ambitions of becoming a professional singer, but deep down I have always known that it’s languages I’m truly talented in, and I have always aspired to become either a linguist, a language teacher or both. This is perhaps due to the fact that I was lucky enough to be surrounded by speakers of three different languages as a child. I went to a bilingual (German-Hungarian) nursery and then a school intended for the German ethnic minority in Southern Hungary, where various subjects, including history, maths and even most of the sciences, were taught – partly or entirely – in German. I also grew up on audiobooks and music in all three languages (the third being English, of course), as well as conversing with speakers of all languages, either in person or through the internet. Moreover, I have always been interested in the nature and structure of language and the similarities and differences between the world’s languages. Whenever I would hear a new word or expression, I would ask my mother, relatives or my primary school teacher “what kind of a word” it was. Even while listening to songs in different languages, I found myself analysing the sound system of the language in question, whilst also enjoying the music itself. Linguistics or English literature? I’ve stopped counting the number of times I asked myself the above question: on the one hand, I was (and still am) a bookworm and genuinely interested in and passionate about literature, particularly English-language literature, and I could genuinely see myself doing research on Blake, Wordsworth, Dickens or any of the other Romantic poets or Victorian novelists I’m fond of. On the other hand, I was fully aware that, since I was educated at a non-British, non-IB school outside the UK, I do not have the necessary grounding in English literary theory and criticism in order to be able to study the subject at university and do well in it, and that no amount of self-study would substitute A-level classes at a further education college in the UK, or working with a tutor. Moreover, I also knew deep down that I have a natural talent for analysing language, i.e. I’d be far, far better off studying linguistics. I really have no idea why, but I insisted on choosing English literature. If only I had admitted to myself all those years ago that linguistics is indeed the right choice for me! It would have spared my family three months of unimagineable trauma and, obviously, it would have spared me three years of uncertainty! I graduated from high school in 2014 with excellent final exam results, achieving 100% in higher-level English and music. I didn’t apply to any universities that year, either here or abroad, because I’d set my mind on studying English literature, and the logical first step to that goal was to take A-levels at a UK college. I did eventually get into one, and I did spend two and a half months in England, but my plans failed miserably for various reasons. Long story short, I was unable to start the course because I didn’t manage to find suitable accommodation. All in all, I made several rash decisions and I refused to listen to my family who were only trying to protect me. I came home in October. The next year, I applied for our British International School’s IB scholarship (English literature would have been one of my subjects). I was shortlisted for interview, but I didn’t get the scholarship in the end because the admissions tests weren’t adapted to my needs and so I couldn’t do as well as I’d wanted to. Meanwhile, I took a 3-month course to improve my mobility and daily living skills (I don’t wish to go into details about it). As a contingency plan, I applied to my current university. My original plan was to finish this course and then apply for a postgraduate degree in the UK, but – just as I expected – it soon turned out that this course isn’t for me – it’s too broad and not intense enough. Obviously, as it’s designed for EFL students, the literature classes (especially the ones in the first year) focus on basic comprehension, basic technical terms, summarising plots, and memorising facts, rather than what would be considered university-level analysis in Britain. Even in some linguistics classes, professors are forced to teach English pronunciation and other basic concepts (not to mention that there are compulsory classes focusing solely ON English language competence, so I was forced to “waste” twice 90 minutes of my life on “language practice”!!). More importantly, both linguistics and literature are only parts of this very broad course. While I was happy with my excellent exam results at the end of the first semester, I was also very disappointed. I did have four very influential and inspirational professors, though (two from abroad), who helped me take the next steps towards my goal. One of them told me after our first consultation that if I’m really serious about my plans, I should apply to a British university “right now”, because “Seminars here are for 15 students, 13 or 14 of whom only attend them because they are compulsory”. The UCAS deadline had already passed, but, after contacting my university choices (surprisingly, all of them seemed to view my situation (and the fact that I don’t have an A-level in English) in a very open-minded way), I applied anyway. One of the professors I have mentioned (he is from Britain himself) was kind enough to act as my referee and to give me private lessons in literature. I did get four offers – including one from Durham for deferred entry -, but I was unable to take any of them in the end because their scholarship deadlines had passed by the time I received all my decisions. I also applied to one of the mature colleges at Cambridge University, where I did get an interview (and then a re-interview), but I didn’t get in in the end because – just as I expected – it turned out that I don’t have the right level of knowledge. This was reflected in my answers at interview and their feedback later. To my greatest surprise, though, they did mention at the end of their feedback that I may consider re-applying for a postgraduate degree. This didn’t stop me from trying to re-appply again for 2017. My tutor and I started to prepare for the Cambridge International A-level in English literature, and I spent the following summer calling up international exam centres and taking private lessons in English literature whenever I could, but – as I could only afford one lesson per week, and nearly all exam centres refused to let me take the exam, it wasn’t going as well as we wanted. I didn’t want to admit this to myself, but all this made me increasingly uncertain about my plans, what with the Brexit referendum. I was getting more and more nervous and frustrated day by day – I wanted to leave my current course, but at the same time I didn’t feel I would be prepared to take the A-level in 2017, let alone start my course in September/October. I was relieved to find out that the referendum decision wouldn’t affect my entitlement to student finance or the amount of tuition fees I would need to pay if I started a degree course in 2017. We sent in my new application last September, and this time I only took third-year literature courses at university. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I got rejected by Cambridge (another college this time) without interview. UCL, my second choice, sent me a questionnaire to complete, which was a good sign. I sent it back to them and then the waiting game began. December 2016 At the beginning of the month, I received an email from the only exam centre where I could have taken the A-level, saying they no longer accept private candidates for exams. Well, I wasn’t very happy with this news, to put it mildly. However, after getting this news I immediately started thinking about alternative plans outside the UK. At first, the ideal second choice seemed to be an Irish university; after all, Ireland is just as much an English-speaking country as the UK. However, all that had happened made me seriously question my plans. If preparing for my “desired” course takes me this much effort, is literary criticism *really* what I want to do as a career, or do I simply enjoy reading and studying literature? It was when I discovered Groningen University’s English language and culture BA, which is very much literature and linguistics focused, that I started really thinking about this. It was during the Christmas holidays that I finally managed to give myself a definite answer to the above question. On 18 December 2016, I started learnin the basics of the Dutch language with the help of some lovely Dutch people I got to know on a language exchange website, who have since become my best friends. After all, if I did end up in the Netherlands, it would be a shame for me to go there not knowing a single word of Dutch. As soon as I started learning the language and realised just how extremely quickly I’m picking it up, everything finally became clear. I finally admitted to myself that, as my high-school Hungarian teacher and later my linguistics professor had confirmed, the answer to the question I’d been asking myself couldn’t be more obvious – that if I didn’t have such an aptitude for language, I would not be able to work out the rules of a new language this quickly. Naturally, knowing both English and German, Dutch is one of the easiest languages to learn, but I would still not be able to get my head around the subtle differences between the three languages if it weren’t for my natural talent. That’s when I started looking at other Dutch universities to see whether one of them offers a BA course in linguistics taught in English. (If I were applying now, the language of instruction wouldn’t matter) I came across the University of Amsterdam and fell in love with their course “at first sight”. I immediately got in touch with my future study advisor, the head of department, Student Services and the two organisations for the blind in the Netherlands. I did ask my British universities to transfer my application to the linguistics department, but I got rejected by both UCL and Edinburgh in February, because, as it turned out, both universities require applicants to have a qualification either in maths or in one of the sciences, which I don’t have (through no fault of my own). It goes without saying that I cursed myself for inssisting on applying for English at Cambridge – after all, I could have applied for linguistics! I did, however, get offers from both Groningen and eventually the UvA. Needless to say, I was delighted and really couldn’t wait to start in September! Their course is more or less similar to Cambridge’s (not to mention that even at Cambridge and UCL, half of the linguistics professors are actually from the Netherlands) I spent the entire summer waiting for the result of my scholarship application, but deep down I knew this one would work out. However certain I was that I would get the scholarship, I'll still enver forget the moment I opened my inbox on August 1st and found the notification email. I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who has supported me through all these years – I couldn’t have done it without you! Dear readers, If something you really (seem to) want doesn't seem to (or isn't meant to) come true, it either means that it's not for you. Want to know more? Read on.