Long has passed since I wrote my last personal piece on BAISmag, so I thought to myself: why not write another one? After all, it will only be my second personal piece after about 16 news articles and 2 interviews, so it will only be fair to write something else by this point. Also, I’ll finally get a chance to write something using the British spelling of words instead of the American one,* a liberty which I haven’t enjoyed in so long.
So, without further ado, here’s my second reflection piece, with its incredibly original title “so far so good.”
I’d say that generally, my attitude towards my studies, social life etc. here in the Netherlands hasn’t changed much since February.
I still very much enjoy what I’m studying, especially now that in the second year we are able to dive deeper into more region-specific topics. I think makes the courses evermore interesting and appealing for people like me who have a strong passion for the area they picked.
I think that many are gonna agree with my next point, although I would see why others wouldn’t. That being that I also enjoy how in our research method seminar we finally learn how to do research in a field/subject which interests us (or at least that we tolerate let’s put it that way). That’s because I know many people didn’t get their first choice for research methods, and that’s why I said I see why some people wouldn’t agree. Despite this, I’m glad at least we were given a choice regarding what we wanted to pick.
On the other hand, back in June when I went back to Italy to spend the summer with my family, little did I know how much I would miss constantly being surrounded by friends and/or familiar faces. It goes without saying though that by the time June rolled around, I really started missing my family a lot. I felt like I really needed that sense of familiarity, of “home” that only people who have been around you since birth can give.
Nonetheless, once I was finally back, I started realising after a while that for the next 3 months, I’ll won’t get the chance to see the same people I used to see everyday: that I won’t see my friends till September, I won’t see all of the familiar faces I usually saw at the lectures and tutorials, that I’ll most likely won’t bump into someone I know from The Hague etc. Basically at this point, I was super glad to see my family again, and at the same time I really started missing the people, especially the close friends I’ve made here. I started reminiscing about all of our nights out, our study sessions together, the casual lunches and everything that comes with being around people you can truly trust and share memories with. Now that I’m back here in The Hague, the only thing that I feel is different is how accustomed we all became to each other. I feel that now there’s a hint of that aforementioned sense of familiarity between us by having been on the same boat for a year: we are all able to understand and relate to each other much better.
Conclusively, I would say that not much has changed for me here (which is not to say it’s a bad thing at all). However,the small changes which I noticed both in uni and social lives so far have all been significant in their own little way. Perhaps there will be more changes further down the line, perhaps negative, perhaps positive, but it is not up to me to say. In the meantime, thanks for bearing with me thus far, hopefully this reading was not dull and boring to you, and I hope some of you might relate or see themselves in what I’ve said here.
*BAISmag uses American English for the news in case you haven’t noticed (in case you did, good job then!)
By Antonio
.
.
.
Image from Unsplash
Find us on Instagram @basis.baismag
BAISmag 