By Alex Kain
Erasmus University College: a lively place full of people who are ambitious and driven to obtain their Bachelor’s degree. It is a place where people from all over the world come together in order to gain knowledge, challenge themselves, and grow as a person.
That is what you are supposed to say. The reality is that, although EUC is a very open-minded, interactive, and stimulating environment, we just want to enjoy our years as a student. As a university college student, this can be challenging, since we have so much on our plate that we do not even know where to start, and would rather pass on the whole meal. Nevertheless, in between the countless hours of self-study and classes, we find time to have fun, hang out with friends, and sometimes even take a little nap. This is what I did on a casual Monday morning:
My alarm went off at 7:30. No, this was not a voluntary choice. The courses I registered for made it so that the 9 am class was the only one I could choose in order to be able to attend all my lectures. I made a plan to wake up and make myself a nice breakfast, and to start the first day of the week with a full stomach and a clear mind. That did not happen. I stayed in bed until 8:30 and then rushed to uni. On my way there, I picked up some hummus (essential item #1 for every student) and I sat down to enjoy a pleasant 3-hour session of Clinical Psychology. This session involved me pretending I did all of the readings, trying to look knowledgeable, and enjoying my hummus in a very audible manner which will probably cause a severe drop in my professional behaviour grade.
After this session, it was time to register for my courses for the third and fourth quad of the year. At EUC, we work in years with four quads instead of two semesters, so every eight to nine weeks we take new courses. For me, this meant finding out what would make me look the most interesting so I could trick other schools into accepting me for a Master’s programme. Once I got over the existential crisis triggered by the question of what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, I decided to go drink some coffee with a friend at a local cafe. This turned out to be a 3-hour thing, but I rationalised I needed one hour of relaxation for every hour of class I had that morning.
After this great coffee break vacation, I went back to EUC to attend my Sociology lecture at 15:15. To be honest, this was not so bad. The lecturer is a great guy, and being able to just sit there and soak up the knowledge like a sponge is something that greatly appeals to me. What I found less enjoyable, however, was the prospect of having to work after my lecture until 22:30. But hey, *insert quote about “making them stacks”.
Work was great. Pretending to like people for four hours straight is an amazing way to forget about all the stress of uni. When at 22:00 the doors of the store closed, I made sure I got out of there as soon as possible. Once I was home, I jumped into bed, pulled up the covers, and started watching the movie “Moana” so I could act like uni was not a thing and I was ten years old again. Tomorrow there will be another day filled with self-study (spoiler alert: I did not do anything the next day. Oops…), so for today it is okay (is what I keep telling myself). All that matters at this point is that Moana can return the heart of Te Fiti!
Alex Kain, Class for 2018, student majoring in Business and Social and Behavioural Sciences, from Zwijndrecht, the Netherlands.
