Persian personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

My interest in Persian began with a wedding invitation. A neighbour asked me to help fold and address about eighty of them, and half were printed in an alphabet I could not read at all. I noticed that some letters seemed to repeat with only the dots changing, and that the writing joined up in a way my French exercise books never did. That evening I looked up the alphabet and found that the system was regular and learnable, which surprised me more than it should have. Within a few weeks I could sound out my neighbours' surname and the names of the streets on the envelopes, and I wanted to keep going. What holds my attention now is the relationship between the language and the literature written in it. I have read Dick Davis's translations of Hafez and some of the Shahnameh in English, and I am aware that I am reading choices someone else has made: where a ghazal's repeated rhyme goes, how a line of narrative verse is broken up. I would like to reach the point where I can compare a translation with the original and understand what has been kept and what has been let go. I am also drawn to Persian because of how far it travelled. Reading about its use in administration and poetry across South Asia and Central Asia changed how I think about the history I study at A level, where I have spent a year on empires and mostly seen them described through European records. A degree in Persian would give me a language, a literary tradition several centuries deep, and a route into regions I currently only know secondhand. I want the discipline of proper grammar teaching rather than the patchwork I have assembled for myself, and I want to be taught to read texts closely in a language where I cannot yet rely on guessing.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

My A levels have given me the habits I will need. English Literature has trained me to slow down over small choices in a text: for my coursework I compared the presentation of exile in two twentieth-century novels, and much of my time went on individual words and how they were repeated. That is the kind of attention I want to apply to poetry in another language. History has taught me to read sources sceptically and to notice who is speaking; my current unit on the Mughal Empire is the first time I have encountered Persian as a working language of government rather than only of literature, and it prompted me to read more about how the language spread. Geography contributes something less obvious but genuinely useful: mapping, place names and the physical reasons why routes and cities sit where they do. When I read about Iran now I have some sense of the mountains and deserts involved rather than a blank space. My AS in French was where I learned how to learn a language. I did badly in my first year of vocabulary tests because I was reading lists rather than using words, and I changed to writing short paragraphs each week and getting them corrected. I have carried that method into my Persian study: I keep a notebook where each new word appears inside a sentence about something real, usually the garden centre or my journey to college. I know that Persian grammar will differ substantially from French, particularly the verb system and word order, and I expect to be a beginner again in the taught classes. I am comfortable with that. I am also taking an Extended Project on the history of the Persian alphabet's adaptation from Arabic script, which has made me read about writing systems more carefully than I would have otherwise.

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

Most of my Persian learning has been independent and small-scale. I borrowed a beginners' textbook from the central library, worked through the script chapters, and made my own handwriting sheets because the book's practice space ran out quickly. A friend from my college whose family speaks Persian at home agreed to look at my writing once a week at lunchtime; she corrects my letter shapes and I quiz her on the English spellings she finds awkward. It is a genuinely two-way arrangement and it has kept me consistent for about seven months. I can now read shop signs and headlines slowly, hold a very limited conversation about food and weather, and recognise perhaps three hundred words. I am not going to overstate it: my listening is poor and I lose the thread of any real conversation quickly. My Saturday job at a garden centre involves the plant section and the till. Customers arrive with a photograph or a half-remembered name and I have to work out what they actually want, which has made me better at asking clear questions and at admitting when I need to fetch someone who knows more. Handling returns on busy weekends has also taught me to stay civil when someone is annoyed with me rather than with the compost. At college I help run a board games club on Wednesdays, mostly setting up, explaining rules to new members and making sure people who arrive alone get into a game. Explaining a rulebook aloud to four people who all want to start immediately is harder than it sounds, and it has improved how I structure an explanation. Outside this I sing in a community choir, where we learn pieces in languages none of us speak and I have become used to producing unfamiliar sounds without embarrassment. I expect the first year of a Persian degree to be demanding in exactly that way: repetitive, public and occasionally uncomfortable. I have enjoyed teaching myself, but I am ready to be taught properly.

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