Eindhoven can wait
After six months of research abroad, Lars ten Hacken realizes how little has changed here in the meantime. His friends, his room, his routine – in short, his student life in Eindhoven – he sometimes really missed it. But honestly: Eindhoven didn’t notice for a second that he was gone.
I never expected this to become the adventure of a lifetime when I first saw in my study plan that I needed to complete an internship worth 30 ECTS. Do you take that internship at a company nearby, so you can simply continue your life, your friendships, and all the parties? Very tempting, especially with an internship allowance. Or do you take a different approach and go abroad? That immediately sounds like a lot of hassle: finding a project, visa bureaucracy, arranging housing, and often quite expensive too.
When a fellow student mentioned he was going to the United States, the idea finally started to take shape for me. Why not? If I don’t do it now, then when? If I hadn’t started exploring options and sending emails right away, I probably would have forgotten about it altogether and taken an internship somewhere close by. Without that little nudge from my fellow student, I likely would have let the opportunity pass me by, or I would have been too late for orientation and paperwork.
As an Applied Physics student, I felt too little encouragement from the university to convince me to take this step – a missed opportunity. Given that shameless promotion for student teams and other extracurricular activities through official channels has become normalized, it might not hurt to shed some light on this curricular activity as well.
Send a reminder to students who can go abroad in the coming year, give returning students the space to share their experiences during lectures in third-year courses, let bachelor’s students earn a MyFuture point by getting informed.
It would be a shame if this unique opportunity is forgotten. Motivate students to start exploring in time, help them make the decision, and ensure they truly step outside their bubble. That is exactly what leads to the formative experiences that enrich student life. Eindhoven can wait. And whoever goes returns with far more than just credits. In three months, I’ll be going again: ten weeks in Beijing.
Lars ten Hacken is a master’s student in Applied Physics at TU/e. The views expressed in this column are his own.
This article was translated using AI-assisted tools and reviewed by an editor.
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