Meet Imani (Aka Xavier). You will almost always find him satiating his burning passion for cooking and photography. He lives by the mantra “Enjoy every moment, even the dullest ones”, and would probably give you a death glare if you don’t agree that pretzels are overrated. He says “wowza” probably 100 times in a week, and has absolutely loved being an international student because of all the amazing experiences he’s gotten to enjoy! His pursuit of film has been nothing short of a dream, a story that is bound to be inspiring. Enjoy!

Introduction and Background.

My name is Imani Waweru, I’m 22 years old, and I just graduated this week actually, with my bachelors degree. I studied Film as my major at the University of Kent. I film and edit various projects like music videos, and I do graphic design as well. If you’d like, you could check that out here.

I was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, and I stayed there all my life until three years ago, when I moved here to the UK. I completed my high school education at Nairobi International School and took my final exams, my A-levels, there as well. 

Why UKC?

I was mainly considering the UK and a few other colleges in the United States as well. The ones that caught my eye were UKC, University of Arts London, University of Bournemouth, and SCAD Savannah College of Arts and Design in the States. In the end, UKC became my first choice, and I did end up getting accepted, and ended up going too, which was pretty sick. 

When I was looking into the city of Canterbury, it seemed like quite a haven; basically a relaxed, smaller version of London. I’d seen that UKC had a considerable number of students studying film, which was encouraging. Moreover, the scenery and the community vibe of the city seemed pretty cool, which made UKC, the University of Kent Canterbury, and the city overall very appealing to me. The entire time while researching it all, I could think about was that I would really like to be here. I got acceptance offers from SCAD, Bournemouth, and UKC, but deciding where to go was a no-brainer. I was elated to be going to UKC!

Stats

I did not need to calculate my GPA as UKC accepted my A-level grades as they were. I also wasn’t required to take the IELTS, TOEFL, or any English proficiency test because one of my A-level subjects was English, and I had studied First language English all throughout high school, which pretty much championed my proficiency.

I studied four subjects for my A-levels, which were Art, Media, IT, and English. My final grades were 3 B’s and 1 A, which was okay for the entry requirements.

Extracurriculars

The main Extracurricular activity I had picked out, which I was unhealthily obsessed with it too, was MUN. I first participated in MUN conferences in year 9 and 10, and immediately got dragged into the whirlpool of MUN fanatics. When the COVID shutdown happened, I was involuntarily forced to stop for a while, but ideally, I would have done it all throughout high school. I picked it up again in my first year of University, so I did MUN in year 1 and 2, which was rather nice. The entire simulation was just so fun, and the aspect of writing resolutions and having debates was also just something that I really enjoyed. A particular highlight that I have of MUN, and just of high school in general, was my last MUN session. Since it was my last conference, I had really decided to have a lot more fun with it and go all out. I was engaging with lots of people and really putting myself out there, and I was awarded the ‘best delegate’ award, which really surprised me. Essentiall,y I think many people have the mindset that to win awards and to stand out you have to be particularly diligent about putting in the work, but that experience taught me that passion alone and being willing to take risks, engage with many people and put yourself out there can sometimes be just as rewarding as “grinding”. 

I also did a number of sports. Largely football, rugby, hockey, and all the different term sports and seasons that we had in school.

Application process

I did not use any mentorship services throughout my university application process, apart from when applying for the visa. Naturally, I also consulted my parents a number of times, especially while writing my application essays. Generally, I did the majority of it on my own.  I have to admit it was rather stressful . Many times I’d get swamped by worries like ‘ “what if I don't get into these universities’,  and a thought I also had a lot was “There’s so many universities out there, how do  I know which ones would be the right choice, a good fit for me? “, so the process was pretty daunting. Regardless of how stressful it was, I was pretty pleased with the outcome. A shred of advice you could take from this, for those who are currently applying, is to start preparing early. The stress cannot be entirely avoided, but it will be radically worse if you start late or if you’re still very unsure about what you want to do.

Application Essays

So for all the universities I applied to, which were about 6 in total, I used the UCAS online portal to make my applications. It’s a UK-centered platform that manages all your applications to universities in the UK; I guess you could think of it as a similar platform to Common App for colleges in the USA.  I was required to pay a small application fee for the universities I was applying to. For the essays, all of my prompts were pretty much the generic “Why do you want to go to X University?”. I went about it by linking the subjects I had done at A Levels with the course I wanted to pursue, which was Film, and explaining why that specific university would be a good fit for what I was looking for.  I also talked about my passion for film and why I wanted to pursue it. I’d already made my profile, so when I was done with my essays, I just began collecting the other documents that I needed. I needed to receive 3 referral letters from teachers who’d taught me, which were processed through the portal. Lastly, I submitted the transcript for my final grades and filled in my personal details in a form.

Visa application

The process of acquiring my visa went surprisingly fast. Once I’d received my UCAS number and the confirmation letter from UKC, I instantly applied for my visa, and I received it just as quickly. It went really smoothly, so that was something I was rather grateful for.

Tuition and Living Costs

Tuition costs 22,000 pounds annually. Resources like textbooks are provided by the university free of charge; all we usually need to do is borrow them. In terms of general living costs, I spend approximately 8.6k pounds a year. I’m moving to a cheaper place soon, though, TT.

Financial aid

I do not have a scholarship, but I do have partial financial aid. It didn’t require a separate application; I filled in a financial aid form for the income office at the university, and then they processed it. Basically how it works is the university provides the invoice for the tuition fees annually, then my parents would put down how much they were covering, then the university would cover the difference.

First Week

During the first week, it was definitely hard to adapt to the new environment. It almost feels like being thrown into the deep end when you don’t know how to swim, because not only is the area new, but you’re also surrounded by people you completely do not know. To be completely honest, for the first few days, I was pretty much holed up in my room, but once I started exploring the town and discovering all these new places, I started settling in, and being comfortable in the new surroundings definitely helps you connect with other people. It was a bit hard to make friends at first, but the people in my first year accommodation were really, really cool people, and they were all from different countries, so it was really cool to talk to them and meet them. We also had student apartments, so I’d say in second year and third yea,r that’s when I got to meet more people who I related to and I was able to form a community too.

Work-life balance

I studied film, so my course had elements of theory and practical. We did essays and created short films, but I personally definitely enjoyed the practical aspects of the course more. In my first year, we did a lot more theory, learning about the basics and foundation of film, then later on we had the liberty to choose which element to work more on. There’s one project that I really had a blast creating. It was in my second year, I had filmed a fashion documentary, focusing on vintage fashion. I created a whole collage opening with a 90s, 2000s hip-hop vibe. It all came together really well and was generally just a really cool assignment. When I was not in class, I was doing a lot of photography, videography, and even editing on the side, just to find an outlet to push my creative ideas in a direction that not only allowed me to be authentic while doing what I loved, but also brought in some money as well. I’d also carried on doing MUN, I dabbled in a bit of chess sometimes, and I was part of a film club society where we - I think you can take a guess at what we did.

My work-life balance was rather fair, however, there were some seasons where I was overly prioritizing my work, spending almost all my time on it, and that definitely affected me. On some days, I was sleep-deprived, which made me start slacking off in terms of falling behind on tasks, being unable to be attentive in lectures, and grade wise as well. After that, I began consciously striving to have a balanced work-life lifestyle, for my own well-being and also because I thought to myself, at the end of the day, I need to pass my classes to graduate, so I couldn’t afford to overwork myself and slack off in class, could I?

Advice

• Be prepared early. Have a solid idea of what you want to study. Although you can always change your course down the line, it’s best to be sure of what you want to do as it's a factor that keeps you grounded when everything around you is unfamiliar. Having a sense of stability definitely helps your experience go by smoothly.

• Don’t rush when picking out your prospects for university. Take your time and make sure that the universities you’re applying to would be a good fit for you.

• Prioritize forming a community. Once you’ve traveled, settle in by reaching out to others, even if it’s just as simple as forming friendships with your flatmates, or the clubs and the spaces that you frequent often. Finding your people becomes easier that way.

• Make the best of your time at university. Three or four years may sound like a long time, but it’ll fly by. Be intentional with how you live at university, after all, your time there is limited!

The road ahead

Now that I’ve graduated, I plan on creating new stuff and continuing to do what I do best, making music videos and editing, in London.