Central & East European Studies [MA/MA(SocSci)] personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

Last summer I bought a 1985 school atlas from a charity shop in Falkirk for 50p. Its map of Europe shows Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and two Germanys, and I spent an evening laying it beside a current map and listing every border and name that had changed. The exercise raised more questions than it answered. Why did Czechoslovakia separate peacefully when Yugoslavia did not? Why do some countries now insist they are Central rather than Eastern European? Milan Kundera's essay The Tragedy of Central Europe offered one answer to the second question, arguing that nations such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia belonged culturally to the West and had been cut off from it. I found parts of the argument convincing, but I noticed how little room it left for Ukraine or the Baltic states, and that made me want to understand the region from more than one vantage point. I want to study it through language as well as history and politics, because almost everything I have read so far reaches me in translation. A degree that combines a regional language with the study of society, memory and political change would let me test arguments like Kundera's against sources in the original.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

For my Advanced Higher History dissertation I am investigating why the August 1980 strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk spread so quickly along the Baltic coast. Timothy Garton Ash's The Polish Revolution: Solidarity gave me a detailed narrative, and I have tried to balance it with translated documents, including the list of the strikers' twenty-one demands. Reading those demands closely changed my argument: I had assumed the strike was mainly about wages, but the demands for free trade unions and an end to censorship showed how economic and political grievances were tied together. Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain helped me see the longer background to that frustration in the post-war years. My German Higher has given me the habit of learning grammar systematically, which I am now applying to Polish. Since January I have worked through a beginner's textbook for about four hours a week and can read short news items slowly with a dictionary; cases are hard, but I enjoy noticing patterns that German prepared me for. In Modern Studies I worked with two classmates on a presentation about EU enlargement in 2004. I researched the accession conditions while they covered public opinion, and our task was to make three separate strands into one argument.

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

I work Saturday shifts on a supermarket bakery counter, where two of my colleagues are Polish. When they found out I was learning, they started correcting my pronunciation during quiet spells and, more usefully, told me which textbook phrases nobody actually says. Talking to them about their home towns made me realise how differently people from the same country can remember the 1990s, which is something I would like to explore more formally. At school I volunteered for our languages evening and, with a Polish-speaking classmate, ran a stall where visitors matched old and new place names across Central Europe, using maps I drew from my charity-shop atlas. She checked the Polish spellings and I wrote the explanations; parents stayed longer than we expected, and several asked where they could read more. Outside school I play fiddle in a ceilidh band that does around one wedding or fundraiser a month. Learning tunes by ear has made me a more patient listener, which has helped with Polish sounds. Every Wednesday I take my grandmother shopping and sort out her online banking, which has taught me to explain things clearly and without hurrying. I am organised, curious and used to working steadily on something until I understand it properly.