Katie Blow

Katie joined the College in September 2005, on an academic scholarship for the sixth form after completing her GCSE’s at Thomas Mills. She made such a mark in her first year that she was appointed Head of Victoria House and then a School Prefect. The scholarship selectors noted that she was in good company – Emile Moreau only attended for the sixth form and he was a Pembroke Scholar.

She’s obviously got a real buzz out of being Head of House which, although it carries a lot of responsibility, has provided lots of opportunities to inspire events such as house dinners, house music and other house-based activities including the sporting ones. Although she’s the first to admit that she’s not a shining star in sports, she always tries to make up for this by driving up support and house spirit. She also thoroughly enjoyed supporting the College’s 1st Rugby team and, although last season was been a little disappointing, she tried to attend as many home matches as she could. This summer has seen her take the same approach to 1st XI cricket, so that there’s always a lot of support for the team from the boundary.

Outside school she’s a member of the local amateur dramatics society (FADS) where she recently performed in “Steel Magnolias” as Shelby. This was her second production with them since joining last year. Being the youngest in the theatre group, by around fifteen years, has given her the opportunity to meet people in the local community that she might never have spoken to otherwise – and this could be good preparation for service on the SOF Council!

Katie is studying for A-Levels in Psychology, Theatre Studies and Art. After A-levels she hopes to go on to university to study Psychology and then to develop a career in Child Psychology. She’s clearly passionate about this, and says, “When studying for my A-Level Psychology I particularly enjoyed learning about children’s development of gender and morals. Then, in my Theatre Studies, the group researched D.I.D – dissociative identity disorder – as part of devised piece. D.I.D can be triggered by severe abuse in the very early years of childhood. I researching further to understand in more detail the features and causes of such a terrible yet fascinating disorder. Who knows, maybe it’s something I can specialise in later on”.

In her final term, Katie has won the Theatre Studies Prize which she will be awarded on speech day – Oh! and she took part in “Salsa Night”, as a dancer which she says was, “probably the scariest thing I’ve ever had to do, so I’m pretty proud of that, silly but true!”.

Although she’s chosen not to go on a gap year, Katie is very interested in travelling and living somewhere new around the world. She would love the opportunity to study abroad as part of her degree, and one thing she’s determined to do is improve her language skills. If she can combine this with her degree course then that, she feels, would give her the best of all worlds.