hi guys, this is my first Essay forum post so far. I need help to edit and omit some sentences. This is the prompt. For those who don't know, UWC high schools are 14 high schools located in 14 countries around the world. UWC promotes multicultural understanding and celebration of differences, and this essay has to show the UWC values and show me as a person, too.
please be thorough with the judging, thank you :))
The UWC application essays are designed to allow students to express their own personal experiences, values, and vision for the future. The essays must reflect the student's original thoughts, ideas, and writing, and authenticity is a critical part of the selection process.
PROMPT: In our country, access to education and resources is not always equal across different communities. Describe a moment when you personally experienced or observed this inequality. What impact did it have on you, and how has it shaped your belief in education as a force for change?
My childhood is an aspect of life that I am incredibly grateful for. I learned how to read, write, and express myself, and I had the privilege to travel. When I was 6 years old, my father's job transferred him to Pokhara, and from then on, my family has moved often. As I shifted schools, I met students from all kinds of backgrounds, and every new school meant a new environment to adapt to, and I learned that the best way to fit in anywhere was to start a conversation. So when I joined a school where differently-abled students learned alongside everyone else, I didn't think much of it. It just made sense, to be honest.
At Phoenix school, we had classmates who were autistic, physically disabled, or had learning challenges. Some students couldn't speak a particular language, and some couldn't speak at all, but everyone was still encouraged to be with everybody else. I learned the very basics of American Sign Language from a girl who could sign more words than she could speak, and I had my first staged play. Throughout my three years at Phoenix School, I made tons of friends, and I've treasured what I learned there.
When I later co-founded Project See the Voices in April of 2025, I wanted to give other students the same experience I had in my formative years. During one of our sessions at another school, the principal asked us if we could include a student who was out of our age range. He explained that the student was differently abled and hadn't made any friends since they got there, since the students in their grade tended to avoid them. I tried talking to the student using ASL, only to realise they used Nepali Sign Language, which I hadn't learned yet. It was such an avoidable problem, but one I hadn't thought of yet. My philosophy of "always start conversations" was flawed because I had faced my first true communication gap.
The team had thought of teaching ASL to students who could later communicate with others in their community, but we hadn't considered the fact that the Nepali hard-of-hearing community doesn't traditionally learn the same language, if they learn sign at all. That made me realise that inequality isn't always about who gets the better classroom or more resources. Sometimes, it's about who gets understood and who doesn't. In thinking about what medium would be easier to teach and learn, we'd lost track of what medium would be of most use.
I may have been fortunate enough to learn one variant of sign, but the majority of my nation's population is not, which is an issue I cannot ignore. If the curriculum could be tweaked to include local languages, it seemed only right that the curriculum could be changed to include NSL. Including NSL could help so many students, and I thought about how other countries- New Zealand, Malaysia, Scotland- already have it in the syllabus. Why hadn't we done that yet? Later on, we had a meeting for the project, and we decided we would be expanding our course, too. We're still in the process of doing so, and we've expanded to add nine more members to the team.
I, personally, feel like that conversation wasn't the only moment that shaped my view of education, but it was an important one. It was then that I realised that most people tend to shun what they don't know much about, and the only way to fix that fear is to educate them on those very things. Education is crucial not only because it creates opportunities for people to improve themselves and the world around them, but also because it's a catalyst; it is the sole pathway to shaping societal values, inevitably leading to social change.
please be thorough with the judging, thank you :))
The UWC application essays are designed to allow students to express their own personal experiences, values, and vision for the future. The essays must reflect the student's original thoughts, ideas, and writing, and authenticity is a critical part of the selection process.
PROMPT: In our country, access to education and resources is not always equal across different communities. Describe a moment when you personally experienced or observed this inequality. What impact did it have on you, and how has it shaped your belief in education as a force for change?
My childhood is an aspect of life that I am incredibly grateful for. I learned how to read, write, and express myself, and I had the privilege to travel. When I was 6 years old, my father's job transferred him to Pokhara, and from then on, my family has moved often. As I shifted schools, I met students from all kinds of backgrounds, and every new school meant a new environment to adapt to, and I learned that the best way to fit in anywhere was to start a conversation. So when I joined a school where differently-abled students learned alongside everyone else, I didn't think much of it. It just made sense, to be honest.
At Phoenix school, we had classmates who were autistic, physically disabled, or had learning challenges. Some students couldn't speak a particular language, and some couldn't speak at all, but everyone was still encouraged to be with everybody else. I learned the very basics of American Sign Language from a girl who could sign more words than she could speak, and I had my first staged play. Throughout my three years at Phoenix School, I made tons of friends, and I've treasured what I learned there.
When I later co-founded Project See the Voices in April of 2025, I wanted to give other students the same experience I had in my formative years. During one of our sessions at another school, the principal asked us if we could include a student who was out of our age range. He explained that the student was differently abled and hadn't made any friends since they got there, since the students in their grade tended to avoid them. I tried talking to the student using ASL, only to realise they used Nepali Sign Language, which I hadn't learned yet. It was such an avoidable problem, but one I hadn't thought of yet. My philosophy of "always start conversations" was flawed because I had faced my first true communication gap.
The team had thought of teaching ASL to students who could later communicate with others in their community, but we hadn't considered the fact that the Nepali hard-of-hearing community doesn't traditionally learn the same language, if they learn sign at all. That made me realise that inequality isn't always about who gets the better classroom or more resources. Sometimes, it's about who gets understood and who doesn't. In thinking about what medium would be easier to teach and learn, we'd lost track of what medium would be of most use.
I may have been fortunate enough to learn one variant of sign, but the majority of my nation's population is not, which is an issue I cannot ignore. If the curriculum could be tweaked to include local languages, it seemed only right that the curriculum could be changed to include NSL. Including NSL could help so many students, and I thought about how other countries- New Zealand, Malaysia, Scotland- already have it in the syllabus. Why hadn't we done that yet? Later on, we had a meeting for the project, and we decided we would be expanding our course, too. We're still in the process of doing so, and we've expanded to add nine more members to the team.
I, personally, feel like that conversation wasn't the only moment that shaped my view of education, but it was an important one. It was then that I realised that most people tend to shun what they don't know much about, and the only way to fix that fear is to educate them on those very things. Education is crucial not only because it creates opportunities for people to improve themselves and the world around them, but also because it's a catalyst; it is the sole pathway to shaping societal values, inevitably leading to social change.
