Extracurricular Development

Board year

Last year I did a full-time board year at Study Association Industrial Design Lucid. My function on the board Was Commissioner of Education. One of the main skills I gained is strategic thinking. In my function, I had to talk to lots of high people in the university. To get what I wanted I needed to form my arguments carefully. Reading people and persuading them is something I enjoy doing and dare to say I am quite good at. Furthermore, I used design thinking in the real world, I worked together with other disciplines and saw that I really could make a difference if I came with solutions instead of problems. For example, I helped with coming up with a new concept for the course surveys. and using brainstorming techniques to accomplish this. Due to covid I also got extensive experience in crisis management. 

 

University council/politics

After my board year being in the role of commissioner of education I decided to stay involved in co-determination at the university, but then on a level higher and joined the university council. After my internship, I really started to see connections between my design background and these activities. Next to developing my skill in strategic thinking even further I found a way to use design thinking in these meetings and activities. I organized lots of brainstorming and co-creation sessions and made plans to create design interventions. I found out my role often is in concluding discussions and coming up with solutions on the spot. I started seeing opportunities for designers in political places like this. I got an entrepreneurial mindset in this area, I try to build a network in politics that could be valuable in the future. I now also do things in politics beyond the university, I became youth ambassador of Eindhoven in jong 040 and started to volunteer at Coalitie-Y (this is a coalition of all the big youth organizations in the Netherlands where we try to get the issues of youth on the political agenda of the Dutch parliament).