Afbeelding
“As an international student, coming to a new country to study, you might think at first that you’re on your own. The fact is there are others in exactly the same boat which means you quickly feel as if you’re part of something. That’s what I had at NHL Stenden. You quickly get a group around you that’s there for you. It helped me to grow as a person and find myself. When you’re young and you don’t know what’s coming, who people are or even how to handle yourself, it’s reassuring to know that others feel the same way. It’s like we all have no clue what we’re doing, but at least we can work it out together.”
Getting the skills
“Even when I didn’t like a subject, I knew I had to push through. And that there were people around to help. I really struggled with business economics, which is ironic because now I’m in charge of an entire budget! I would never have imagined that back when I was a student. I remember failing those business economics exams and thinking, ‘I’ll never need this,’ and yet, here I am, managing millions of euros every day and loving it. Even if you don’t need a subject directly in your work, the knowledge is in your head and it’s always useful. The skills you’re most likely to use on a daily basis, however, are the soft skills. We did a lot of group work at NHL Stenden. Working on assignments and coming up with solutions to problems together is a big part of the way of learning. You couldn’t just sit back and wait for someone to tell you what to do. You had to engage, contribute, and sometimes lead. Working together with the same kind of mindset, means you can raise each other up so you achieve your aims. A lot about being in a team is actually having that sense of helping each other, being able to compromise, to reach a decision everyone is happy with. It’s exactly what I do every day now at ITB. It just goes to show that sometimes, you just don’t realise how important a skill will be.”
“I also struggled with Spanish at first, despite having studied it for seven years in school. I just didn’t feel I could speak it properly. My lecturer, Ellen, kept me in the advanced class and kept telling me, ‘You’re good. Stop doubting yourself.’ She stayed with me, helped me and really supported me. I needed that encouragement. It wasn’t just about academic support; it was about believing in myself. That’s something else you carry with you into your career.”
Shaping my future
“I did my internship at Messe Berlin, working at ITB, and, quite simply, I never left. The internship turned into a full-time position, and here I am, years later, still loving what I do. We have interns from Stenden at ITB nearly every year now, and it's great to see how their learning experiences mirror my own. They get thrown right into the workplace, become part of the team and work in the industry they’ve been studying. In that respect, an internship is really great preparation for your career.”
"Interestingly enough, I didn’t actually know what I wanted to do when I started studying. I had no clue! I just knew I loved the idea of being surrounded by international cultures and languages and tourism just embodies all that for me. I didn’t have a specific career path in mind, but NHL Stenden helped me figure that out by giving me real-world experiences and opportunities that shaped my future."
Find out more about Tourism Management on the programme’s website.