29 Jun Warwick Sutton Scholars – Year 1 Celebration Event
Written by Abdul – Year 8 student reporter
On Saturday 9th of June, I went to the Warwick Sutton Scholarship Celebration event. The event was to mark the end of our first year at Warwick University.
For your information, the Warwick Sutton Scholars is a two year programme for Year 8 and 9 students who achieved good results at the end of Year 6, and come from backgrounds that are under-represented in higher education. The programme is for schools from across the West Midlands. I still remember vividly the day we were informed that we had been rewarded with the Scholarship, 20th December 2017, our last day before Christmas break. It was our BIGGEST Christmas present, ever!
Looking back at the start of our journey (only some months ago), we were all complete strangers, gathering together on the Warwick University campus on a cold wintry Saturday morning in January. Then we were allocated to different groups, each with a Scholars mentor (who were very young and passionate to help us throughout our sessions here). One of our projects was to come up with a political party, including its name and its manifesto. It took us a long time to finalise the ideas, the party logos and action points for the campaign to win the public votes (in this case it was our parents, teachers and the judges who decided who would win the election).
Today, on the day of Celebration, all parties would need to present their hard work to the audience of parents, family members and teachers. No pressure then!
It was 9:30am, and all of us settled down in the nice chairs of the Oculus Building of the University. We took turns to do our presentations. The topics included racism, the NHS Funding shortage, and gender inequality, to name but a few. It was nerve-racking, but all of us did our best and delivered what each team wanted to achieve. We also had to respond to the judges’ questions after our presentations. The winning team was announced at the end of the morning.
Going to this special event was very inspiring because we got to see how each group used their imagination and political views to create a political campaign. Even though my team didn’t win, I still feel that we worked hard in every aspect and it was taking part in the event that counted. The event made us think of what we had done well and learn how to improve ourselves in our second year at the University.
To conclude, my whole reflection of Year 1 at the Warwick Sutton Scholarship programme was that it was an excellent learning experience, as it really made me engage with people I never met before and communicate my ideas to my group-mates so that we worked together strongly as a team.
This has been our motto throughout the project: “The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.” -Margaret Carty.
We thank the Warwick Sutton Scholars for enabling us be a part of this exciting journey.