Armenian personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

I first saw the Armenian alphabet written out on the back of a delivery note. A colleague at the trade counter, Hovhannes, was showing me how to spell my name, and I was struck by how little the letters resembled anything I could guess at, and how systematic they were once he explained that the alphabet was designed for the language rather than borrowed for it. I bought a beginners' book that month, mostly out of stubbornness, and found that the grammar interested me even more than the script: a language with seven cases, no grammatical gender, and a verb system that rewards patience. Three years later I can read aloud slowly, follow simple news items, and understand why I keep getting the ablative wrong. What holds my interest now is bigger than vocabulary. Armenian is an independent branch of Indo-European with no close living relatives, which means the questions surrounding it are genuinely open: how Eastern and Western varieties diverged, how the classical written language shaped both, how a literary tradition survived dispersal across continents. I want to read Classical Armenian properly rather than in translation, and to understand the linguistics of a language that sits slightly apart from everything I learned about language families at college. Studying this as a degree, alongside literature, history and the structures of the region, is the only way I will get further than the self-taught plateau I have reached. I am applying at thirty-four with clear eyes about the work involved, and with the advantage of knowing exactly why I want to do it.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

I left school after GCSEs with reasonable grades in English, History and Geography, and went straight into work because that is what suited me at seventeen. Returning to study was a decision I made gradually, beginning with an evening class in Russian at the local college, which I chose partly because a lot of the Armenian material I could find at the time assumed some knowledge of it. I enjoyed the discipline of homework again more than I expected. Last year I completed an Access to Higher Education Diploma in Humanities, studying two evenings a week and one afternoon while working four days. The units in literature and historical research were the most useful preparation: I learned to build an argument from sources rather than from opinion, and to reference properly, which I had never been taught. My extended project compared two English translations of a short Armenian folk tale, looking at how each handled reduplication and diminutives, and it taught me how much interpretation happens before a reader sees a word. Alongside formal study I work through a Modern Eastern Armenian textbook with a tutor over video call for an hour a fortnight, and I have started keeping a notebook of verb forms I encounter in songs and subtitled films. I have read Razmik Panossian's account of Armenian identity and its divisions, which reshaped how I think about the relationship between language and diaspora, and I am slowly reading through an English translation of Yeghishe Charents's poetry while attempting a few lines in the original. I know my grammar is patchy and my reading speed poor. A structured course is what I want precisely because it will not let me avoid the difficult parts.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

Nine years on a trade counter teaches you to listen carefully to people who are in a hurry, often on a bad line, sometimes in a second or third language. A good part of my job has been translating between what a customer asks for and what they actually need, then explaining a delay without making it worse. For the past four years I have also managed stock reconciliation for the branch, which means long stretches of detailed, unglamorous accuracy work: checking figures, finding where a discrepancy began, and writing it up clearly enough that someone else can follow it. That habit of patient checking is the single most transferable thing I bring to language study, because memorising declension tables is not so different in temperament. I trained two new starters on the counter system, which showed me how much I learn by having to explain something step by step. Outside work I volunteer monthly at a community repair café, mending kettles and lamps with more enthusiasm than expertise, and I have learned a good deal there from an older volunteer who talks me through circuits while we work. I also do my grandmother's weekly shop and take her to hospital appointments, which has taught me to organise my time in fixed blocks rather than hoping for free evenings. I sing with a small local choir, and last autumn we learned a piece in Armenian; being the one person who could gloss the text for everyone else was a small thing, but it confirmed how much I want to know more than I currently do. Studying full time will mean dropping to weekend work and budgeting carefully, and I have planned for that. I am used to early starts, long tasks and being the oldest person in the room.

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