Here commences the Personal Statement of the Right Honourable Patricia Eustacia Dalton-Ward, intended for the study of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, college irrelevant.

As the scintillating sun reached its zenith on a warm summer’s day, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe uttered the following sacred words that would change my life forever: “The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation”. Upon reading these words, my hands shook with the weight of a philosophical calling. On my way to kindergarten, I decided then and there that my purpose in life would be to avenge my hero by ensuring that through my extensive reading, literature would be saved, and the nation thus rescued from decline. Having read the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopaedic Dictionary from cover to cover, aged six, I discovered a passion for language that stoked an intellectual fire within me, and it scorches me to this day. This is how my legacy began, and I intend to commit myself to study at Oxford in order to fulfil my destiny and make my great-great-great-grandparents proud. One should always do one’s best, after all.

A distinctive chill runs down my spine when I find the longest possible book imaginable and bury myself in it, hardly emerging to eat, drink, or sleep (a worthy sacrifice). I quickly grew out of my infantile taste for ‘short stories’, progressing instead through the great literary canon. I found myself unable to extract adequate pleasure or intellectual stimulation from such moronically short creations; who ever learnt anything meaningful about life or society from The Great Gatsby? I shall therefore entertain myself forevermore with the jocund 900 pages of Anna Karenina, thank you kindly.

I can vividly recall when I first set foot in a library; my parents had thankfully decided that the rudimentary Biff, Chip and Kipper books and childish fairy tales would not suffice to quench my unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Thus, from my push-chair, I directed them to the Renaissance Literature section, and, as my hands touched the leather-bound spine of the 3-Volume Complete Works of William Shakespeare, I felt the same calling that Goethe had instilled in me a year earlier. Shakespeare himself was reaching out to me across the centuries; it was no mistake that I first turned to the pages of Hamlet. I am perfectly represented by the intellectual, reflective and vivacious eponymous hero. I too find myself constantly plagued by the unanswerable questions of life and have once been indecisive.

My extra-curricular activities are highly demonstrative of my desire to aid everyone who crosses my path, even the most undesirable of personages, like the elderly. My desire found outlet when I read Tolstoy’s War and Peace to blind children in unjustly underfunded orphanages on the Patagonian coast. I was inspired by how quickly they grasped the philosophy of existentialism and the futility of their young lives. When I am not playing polo with the ladies at the country club, I can of course be found reading, either in my humble 18^th-century Windsor townhouse, or, alternatively, in my modest summer château in the south of France (generously bequeathed unto my family by my aforementioned great-great-great-grandparents who also attended Oxford – perhaps you’ve heard of the Magdalens? As they say in France: beaucoups mercy, les grands-pèars!). In these humble environs, I also dabble in a little writing of my own, inspired by another great thinker who shares my contempt for the pretentious and pompous bourgeoisie with which I have no affiliation: Jean-Paul Sartre. My book shall appear in Waterstones next summer, with all the money accrued donated to various charities, some more important than others. I’ll be delighted to provide you with a signed copy.

There clearly is nothing I take more seriously than literature, therefore it seems to me the perfect time to take the next step and follow my undying passion. As Ophelia sagely proclaimed in Hamlet, “To thine own self be true”; I cannot deny myself truth, therefore I speak honestly and ardently to the admissions tutors of this most prestigious institution. My love for printed matter must not be underestimated. Really, it would be doing sweet little five-year-old Patricia Eustacia a great disservice not to permit her to pursue her dearest wish. Whilst other puerile infants demanded the hideous decadence of toys and video games on their birthdays, I had a more noble request: that world peace be achieved through literature. I beseech you to help me fulfil this wish at Oxford and set me on the path to humble myself in the face of literature and educate the ignorant common folk of the world, of which there are just so many. It is my duty to elucidate the necessity of the written word.

As John Steinbeck once declared, “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen”. My mind is full to the brim with rabbits.

Precisely 4000 characters.∎

Words by Téa Sand. Art by Selene Gadsby.