A total of 10 De Beers English Olympiad scholarship winners are attending Rhodes University this year. Last year, 6748 candidates wrote the three hour open-book exam, of which the top 50 candidates are awarded full tuition for the first year of study at Rhodes, subject to meeting entrance requirements.
Four of the De Beers English Olympiad scholarship winners interviewed recently said, they are really enjoying their studies at Rhodes and the University is really geared towards an all-round learning experience.
They owe their success to their English teachers, who they said were instrumental in persuading them to write the Olympiad exam.
Kerstin Hall, who is studying towards a BA degree majoring in English, came second overall and said she was lucky, because she really enjoyed the short stories that were handled in the paper.
“The questions were phrased in an interesting way, which allows you to really branch out and have fun,” she says. Landing in the top three, Kerstin won an all-expenses paid trip to England, visiting London, Bath, Canterbury, Salisbury and Oxford.
Danica Clea Kreusch, who grew up in Hermanus, says she is really happy to be at Rhodes and, with the first year taken care of, it lessens the financial burden for her mom, who raised her by herself.
“I’m basically getting paid to go to the best,” she says, as Rhodes was her first choice to study Journalism and English.
“I particularly enjoy the community of being at Rhodes, because the campus isn’t as spread out as other universities, you get to interact with people much easier, even getting to know the crazy ones,” she quipped.
Ian Currie, a Journalism, Drama and English student, matriculated at Pretoria Boy’s High where their teacher urged all his students to write the Olympiad. The same was the case for Lillina Ruiters - it is compulsory for all matrics at Westerford High, Cape Town.
Their paper was on an anthology of morals and ethics. “I thought it was a las [burden] but my mother died laughing when she heard the topic,” she jokes.
She says she thought it was one of the worst essays she had ever written, so she was very surprised when she was pulled out of her Afrikaans class to receive the news.
Ruiters didn’t plan on attending Rhodes as she had spent her junior school years in Grahamstown, and wasn’t that keen to return.
“I thought I would take a gap year, but being here now I changed my mind,” she says. As she is studying Zoology, Drama, Maths and Classics her academic programme is varied.
Currie is glad he wrote the Olympiad, it afforded him the opportunity not only to be at Rhodes but to participate in the National Schools’ Festival. “It was one of the best weeks of my life,” he says.
The main aim of the Olympiad is to enrich learners through the self-study of English and to encourage critical thinking and creative writing. The competition has been sponsored by De Beers for 36 years and is jointly organised by the Grahamstown Foundation and the South African Council for English Education (SACEE).
The top 15 also attend the National Schools’ Festival, where the top 100 is announced.
The rest of the candidates who received the Rhodes scholarship are: JE du Toit; AJ Gallant; ST Lewis; AGS McNaughton; SF Mongie and TL Spears.
Story and photo by Anna-Karien Otto
Photo: from left to right: Danica Kreusch, Lily Ruiters and Ian Currie.