25 February 2021
This week’s Woldingham Talks programme gave students the opportunity to find out more about two universities – Exeter and Edinburgh – and to learn about “Jane Austen and Ethics” from one of their peers.
On Monday 22 February, we launched our new University Insight Talks series with a talk from the University of Exeter. Exeter is always a very popular choice for Woldingham students and it was obvious from the talk why that is. Our speaker, Amy Williams, talked about Exeter’s two campuses, its facilities, the fantastic array of opportunities at Exeter in sport and other activities and societies, and also highlighted Exeter’s excellent Career Zone, which helps students organise work experience, placements and graduate roles.
Each Monday of this half term will feature a talk from a different university. On Monday 1 March, it will be the turn of the University of Edinburgh, for which alumna Shivani, who left Woldingham in 2020, may have already whetted appetites.
Shivani, who is studying biomedical science at Edinburgh, spoke to Head of Science Mrs Baldwin in another of our “In Conversation With” sessions on Tuesday 23 February. Although currently studying from home, Shivani loves Edinburgh, both the university and the city. Mrs Baldwin suggested that some Woldingham students are put off by the distance, but Shivani pointed out that it’s only four hours by train from London and that she finds the train journey a great opportunity for studying. As always with our recent leavers, Shivani had some good advice for current Woldingham students, including starting, and completing, your personal statement early and really getting to grips with good time management, which is a huge help when starting university life. Shivani also suggested it’s important to give yourself time to settle in to university life and studies as it can take some getting used to.
Anyone with an interest in literature who missed Lower Sixth Form student Sophie’s fantastic Thinking Big talk, “Jane Austen and Ethics”, on Thursday 25 February is strongly advised to watch the recording via Teams. Sophie’s admiration for Jane Austen is well known – in 2020 she won first prize in the age 11-17 fiction category in the Jane Austen’s House writing competition. Sophie’s Thinking Big talk demonstrated her in depth knowledge of the author and her work and looked at things from an ethical perspective, including Austen’s ability to display so many different virtues and vices in a single novel or even a single family, as Sophie’s entertaining in depth look at Pride and Prejudice’s Bennet family showed. Well done, Sophie – a talk not to be missed!