Ricardo Drosinos
A completely different way of learning and the opportunity to get work experience while you study were the two main reasons Ricardo Drosinos came to NHL Stenden to study Business Administration. He’s now confident he’ll be well equipped to start work where he wants and in the field he’s now decided suits him best.
“It took a while for me to find out what I wanted to study. I’d seen NHL Stenden at a study fair at my secondary school and the practical way of learning really appealed to me. I’m definitely the kind of person that learns best while doing things so NHL Stenden’s design-based education concept sounded right for me. I have ADHD and struggle to pay attention to words in a book. My trick is to highlight the important words but this takes so long to do, it sucks. I figured the learning by doing approach and working with companies would give me more experience than just reading a book and then going to a job and not knowing what I was doing.”
“The business administration course is really practical and there’s a lot of flexibility on the programme. It sometimes felt overwhelming in the beginning as I got used to the way of teaching. It’s as if what’s expected of you is all a bit vague. And yet, every single time, I’ve been able to work things out and get results. Help is available when you ask for it and the lecturers are there to guide you through, nudging you towards where you need to go and what you need to do, but it’s up to you to really understand how.”
Ready for the workfloor
“One of the classes I did in my first year was marketing and immediately I thought, ok, this looks interesting. So when I got a chance to do an internship in the area of creative communications, in other words, digital marketing, I decided to go for it. I was lucky that the internship was with RUN-EU at NHL Stenden, so I could stay here in Leeuwarden and yet still get the chance to travel. RUN-EU is a network of higher education institutions in Europe that offers short programmes for students focusing on sustainable regional development. My tasks were broad from giving presentations to creating content and posters for publicity. I’m also now writing my thesis for RUN-EU looking at how they can create and use an Instagram account. On a professional level, I’ve learnt and put into use lots of skills. On a personal level, the internship gives great insights into how different a work lifestyle is from student life. I work office hours and need to fit my gym workouts, socialising and sleeping around that. I could just roll into working life now.
One of my other tasks as an intern for RUN-EU included going to the Grand Assembly in Portugal. I looked at the proposals the student council had come up with for getting more students interested in doing the RUN-EU programmes and had to present them to the Grand Assembly. It was terrifying presenting to the big bosses, but it went well. So well, that they then asked me to join them for a panel discussion on stage later. That was good.”
Ready for the next step
“Business Administration is a broad programme and gives you a grounding in all kinds of aspects of business.The nice thing is that because you get a taste of everything, from entrepreneurship to sustainable innovation, and from organisational behaviour to strategic management. It means you get to find out which areas you particularly want to follow up on. It helped me realised that I like sales even more than I thought and it’s taken me into digital marketing which was unexpected. And now I’m doing a second internship, I’m also a step closer to getting the two year’s work experience I need for a sponsored visa for Australia. That’s my next move.”