My Woodhouse Law

Christiana Ajai
Christiana Ajai
 
Chistiana Ajal came to Woodhouse from St Francis’ College and lives in Barnet. She is currently studying law, sociology and philosophy in her second year of A level.
 
“I chose law because I was interested in studying something that I didn’t get to cover at GCSE. Law is something you see a lot in everyday life but you don’t tend to know exactly how everything works. They didn’t offer A level law at my school sixth form and I searched around, found Woodhouse online, came to open day and then applied here, specifically to do law.
 
I became interested in law when I was younger watching crime shows, even now I really like ‘How to get away with murder’. And I often thought maybe I could become a lawyer one day.
 
I think it’s different to my other subjects because there’s a lot of precision – it’s like ‘this is the exact law’ and you have to know it.
 
Currently, we are studying murder and going over the defence of murder. Our teacher spells out the relevant law and then we look at stories and situations that are linked, to try to understand how things would work in a real-life situation. We can throw out a question in class like ‘How does this relate to that case in the news today?’ and our teachers make it relevant. They give us great resources and there’s lots you can do here to consolidate your learning. Our teacher was a solicitor before, so she knows first-hand what she is talking about.
 
We’ve been on great trips to a magistrates court and a Crown Court. One of the first cases we saw was a money case and a little boring – just about numbers… But the other case was better to watch, especially the interaction. We saw the defendant sat in the box really reacting to the way they were being spoken about, and the woman who was giving her a case was very angry at them. It was really interesting.
 
I did mixed martial arts and volleyball for extracurricular which was fun. Volleyball was good, I wasn’t the best at it, but I tried. The MMA was better, but there was a lot of rolling around on the floor of the gym. I might continue with it in the future, I’ve done some self-defence before.
 
I’m not studying law at degree level, I’m hoping to take sociology at LSE which is my first choice university. I’m also applying to Bath, Bristol and Goldsmiths. I want to keep studying sociology at a high level beyond degree and do my own work and maybe publish it. That’s why I chose law, because all my subjects link together - I learn about crime in sociology and then learn about the actual laws themselves.
 
I’m more forward with my teachers now and a lot more comfortable just asking them for more work or how to do things. At Woodhouse, It’s definitely different to school life, but in a good way. There’s more independence, which at first I was worried about, but you get used to it really quickly and I’ve met a lot of new people."