When I first encountered the written English language, I despised it. Perhaps it was the daunting nature of the three-lettered word “CAT” or how so many consonants remained silent, a phenomenon my bilingual mind struggled to grasp. I remember my mother teaching me, through my tearful frustration, a written language that wasn’t her first. It was because of her that I immersed myself into the English language. I understand now that without those years of strife, my passion for English writing and its importance would have been lost to me.

Studying in the oldest literature department in the world has been a dream of mine since I first opened the pages of Jane Austen, the Brontës, and Virginia Woolf. I would like to think, centuries or decades later as I write this, that they would be proud to see female writers today making such strives in the literary world. I hope my mom is proud too. She wants to help me pay for it, but instead I want to tell her thank you by raising enough money to study abroad. I want to tell her thank you for being courageous when I wasn't, for never giving up on me, and for always encouraging me to write, even when I thought I couldn't.