Maisie’s love of learning lands her £1,000

Maisie PriorA Bangor University student whose course has taken her to some amazing places and given her more life experience than she could ever imagine has come runner up in this year’s UCAS/The Times Love Learning competition.

Maisie Prior, 20, from Littlethorpe, Leicester, who’s studying for a BA Spanish with International Experience degree, is one of three runners up, and won £1,000 plus a year’s subscription to The Times.

Around 2,500 current students entered the competition that challenged them to write a 500 word essay or produce a 30 second video that shows how they have been captivated by their course.

Mary Curnock Cook, Chief Executive of UCAS said: “The second year of our Love Learning competition has given more students the chance to proclaim an unbridled passion for their subject.

 “Congratulations to our winners and runners up on their entries which capture powerfully the sense of self creation and expansion that is the essence of higher education.”

Loving her course, Maisie wrote in her essay:

… I believe my dearly loved degree has made me who I am today. Spanish has given me the confidence to just drop everything and go, if only to satisfy that craving of needing to learn more; learn more vocabulary, learn more about different food, cultures, and the kindness of strangers. To learn what it means to be fearless, to be lost in a new place, to be the only one in the room who is foreign.

Excited with her achievement, Maisie said: “'I entered the competition in hope that I could inspire other people to learn languages.

“I was very surprised to be a runner up, it’s incredible! Studying Spanish has been such a journey; I’m so passionate about it and I'm really pleased this came across in the essay. It’s also amazing to get some recognition for the subject as a whole, especially with recent drops in university applications for modern languages.

Publication date: 1 August 2014