Our mortality is a difficult concept to grapple with at any age – yet my mother contracted cancer when I was 10, forcing me to confront this much younger than I would have wished. I will never forget my powerlessness in knowing that rather than a cure, we could only trust in an inexact process of destroying swathes of cells in the hope of killing all cancerous ones as well. Thankfully, she recovered, and with this good news I never wanted to feel so powerless again, striving for empowerment through understanding more about her recovery and the mechanisms behind the drugs and treatments that saved her life.

As I delved more into it, I realised that cancer 'ran in the family', with former patients including my grandparents, mother, aunts and uncles, as if something was being passed down. My suspicions proved true as I stumbled upon heredity and genetics, amazed by genes, DNA and that people were akin to computers in how they can be coded in just 4 letters: ATCG . Although cancer cannot be caused by one gene or inheritance alone, people with inherited faulty genes have higher chances of developing cancer and I realized it was simply in my family’s ‘code’. This kindled an interest in science, especially in biology and chemistry, that has since developed into a passion of mine , which is why I want to pursue biochemistry formally at university. …show more content…
Apart from studying Further Maths, Biology and Chemistry, I regularly compete in scientific competitions, with my proudest moments including a Gold at the British Chemistry Olympiad, a Silver at the Cambridge Chemistry Challenge and a qualification in British Mathematical Olympiad round 1, amongst others in Maths and Physics . These experiences have earned me an honorary academic scholarship, but even more importantly have only whetted an appetite for me to learn even more about the creative application of these fields in solving