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All scholarship holders

Mariana Scholzová

Our grant holder 2017 - 2021

High school

Open Gate

University

The University of Edinburgh

Field of study

Udržitelný rozvoj

Open Gate graduate

I was born in Říčany where I attended elementary school at the first level. Then I joined the first year (prima) of the Open Gate eight-year grammar school, winning a unique chance to complete my education with both the Czech school leaving exam and the International Baccalaureate. Having taken both exams offered me a broader view of the world and motivated me to study sustainable development abroad.

When I was a high-school student I was not sure what I wanted to do in the future, and so I tried out as many activities as possible in order to find out the right thing for me. I participated in the debating league, gave remedial classes to students in both academic subjects and swimming, and took part in and completed all the levels of The Duke of Edinburgh Award. Among other things I also spent a lot of time and effort travelling – my last big trip was a one-month volunteering project in India.

Secondary School

Open Gate Grammar School, graduated in 2017

University

The University of Edinburgh, Sustainable Development, a four-year MA program, beginning 2017

Goals

Protect the environment and help create better conditions for future generations as well as focusing on environmentally acceptable solutions to problems in developing countries.

Interests

Art, reading, sports, environmental protection

My articles and what has been written about me

All articles

Universities

02/08/2021

Pentland Hills

During the last winter lockdown I am not too keen on going outside for walks. I have already walked in every park in the city at least a hundred time. The parks were at least in full bloom last year in the first lockdown, and it was sunny sometimes. But now its cold, dark, grey and it rains almost every day. But we have one advantage. There is a huge national park right outside of Edinburgh. Pentland Hills are basically a miniature version of the Scottish Highlands. You can see the tops of the hills poking behind houses on our street, and you get a gergoues view from the top of Arthur’s Seat or high university buildings.

Universities

11/16/2020

Saint Martin’s …duck?

The day of Saint Martin is approaching, and I am missing the Czech Republic. My dad’s name is Martin, and I am already looking forward to calling him and posing the never-ending question: ‘are you going to arrive on the white horse this year?’. He hears this question over and over every year and I think that he is getting quite tired of it. I do not think we have ever prepared the traditional Saint Martin’s goose at home before, but this year, I have a feeling that it is needed. Because of the pandemic I will probably not be going home for Christmas and it makes me more attached to Czech traditions. And so, it makes me decide to try to prepare this feast with the least amount of experience.

Universities

08/06/2020

Strikes and the pandemic

New, a month-long strike started again in the middle of the semester. Unfortunately, as a humanities student I am used to this. A strike brings on a completely new regime of self-study. I get up every morning, go to the library, and search for the topics and readings I need to catch up. Both lectures and tutorials are cancelled and so all studying is completely reliant on me. It can be freeing. You get to decide what to do, make your own study schedule, and prioritize the topics that are the most pressing. On the other hand, it is quite tiring. All learning is dependant on you alone. During a strike, the lecturers and tutors on strike are not allowed to answer emails from students and their consultation hours are cancelled. So, if you have any questions about the covered topics, they will remain unanswered until the end of the strike. And while students promise to form study groups at the beginning of the strike, they often fall apart after the first week. This is how the strike rids you of two main components of university education: expertise and knowledge of the educators, and the discussion with other students.

Universities

02/28/2020

The Meadows Share

When I moved to Edinburgh, I went to Ikea and bought a lot of new things. I needed to settle into my new flat. And so, I bought new dishes, table lamp, plant pots and framed pictures to hang on the wall. It cost a lot of money, most of it was of poor quality and lots of it broke after a couple months of use. I complained to my friends who have lived in Edinburgh for a couple years, and they recommended for me to check out a Facebook group called The Meadows Share. I haven’t heard of it before, but since I couldn’t read very well in the evenings as my table lamp was giving up on me, I decided to join.

Universities

12/09/2019

Dissertation

Even though I am only in third year, I have been preparing for my dissertation research since the beginning of the semester. While I study Sustainable Development, I will be writing my dissertation using methodology of Social Anthropology. This research involves ethnographic fieldwork, which will last around one month during the next summer, which is why we have to prepare for it so much sooner than other students.

Universities

06/26/2019

Conservation within one conversation (about climate change)

I already accepted that for many people I am a “hippie”. And to be fair, they have a point: I wear shoes that I made myself, I use cloth produce bags in the store instead of plastic ones, I spend most of my money on tofu and I buy exclusively organic toilet paper. If I saw myself walking down the street, I would probably assume that this girl just returned from a month’s long retreat at some kind of permaculture farm. But I do not view these labels as negative. If someone was to call me that, I would probably accept it as a compliment rather than anything else. To me, it means that I live by the values that I deem important and that I value them more than people’s opinions.

Universities

03/19/2019

English or Czech?

February is only slowly winding down, but all the flowers are in full bloom. It is more than ten degrees Celsius, which is technically considered summer here in Scotland. People are walking around in t-shirts and shorts, the parks smell of barbeque and kids are running around, playing with Frisbees or alternatively trying their hand at slacklining. In the last week, I spent almost four full days in the park trying to replenish my vitamin D supplies after long and dark Scottish winter. When I went to the park with Míša Zemachová, we stumbled upon an interesting topic: how does it feel to keep switching between Czech and English and how do we see the differences, and how we are viewed by native speakers.

Universities

11/15/2018

28th October 2018

We celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Czechoslovak republic together with Míša Zemachová. To celebrate, we made “halušky” and played pretty much all czech songs from our childhood while we lip synced and danced. For the right ingredients we had to go to the Polish store and pay extra few quid for the proper Czech beer in the supermarket. I saw all the posts on Facebook about the celebrations in Prague, photos of freshly poured beer and homemade meals and all I wanted was to go home. One's journalists words stuck with me. He said: “This kind of anniversary is once in a lifetime event”. While this might sound as an empty phrase, it resonated with me. I will never live through such a big one in my lifetime again. And in two days, it is the 17th November, a big date in the Czech history. And I won't be home again.

Universities

07/01/2018

The rock

At the beginning of January, after many years I returned to climbing. When I was a small kid, we used to go climbing with my father and my sister to an indoor climbing center at Smíchov and once we even went climbing outdoors. Children are basically indestructible and unbeatable at climbing - they are flexible and light, they are not afraid of heights and they never get tired. It is quite normal to see a kid climb a much harder route than an adult could manage. And that is how it looked when I climbed as a kid.

Universities

02/28/2018

February 2018

Edinburgh is beginning to feel like “home”. At the Prague airport, I am thinking, “I am going home”. When we all met at our flat, we were excited about our two new flat mates from Argentina, who have come to spend their second semester at Edinburgh University. Everything is returning to normal. The arguments about the (un)washed dishes in the sink and the pizza boxes piling up next to the bins are the center of the heated debate. We talk about our new timetables and about the fact that our results have still not been released, even though we sat our exams almost a month ago.

Universities

11/15/2017

A big move?

I was working the day the IB results were supposed to come in. I remember how I was trying to figure out the exact time of the release and how to ask for a lunch break so I could read them alone in a calm place. I was so nervous and my hands were shaking so much that right before they were released, when I was carrying the drinks to one table, I knocked over the cans of soda. The results themselves surprised me enormously. I never thought that I would achieve the requirements that University of Edinburgh had set for me.

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