My future is literally open, says Joost

Joost van der Linden (24) is a fourth-year Finance & Control student in Eindhoven. During his last internship, he discovered that working with numbers is not quite his thing: too much sitting behind a computer. Despite that, he wants to graduate soon. He is confident that a bachelor degree will open up new horizons for him no matter what.

“Because of Covid-19, I mainly had to do my internship at home. That was not motivating. Furthermore, the work itself was difficult for me: time and again checking a lot of figures. Slowly I realized that I want something different after all. 

What that is, I honestly don’t know yet. I’ll see what comes my way after graduation. I am absolutely not concerned about that. I will soon have a bachelor’s degree and that – in any case – offers opportunities. Moreover, I believe that you mainly learn a trade in practice.

Partly as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, I developed a pragmatic attitude. At first I was quite frustrated, but I found that this made little sense and I was mostly bothering myself. I learned that I couldn’t change the rules anyway and decided to let it go. That immediately made me feel more free.

In a broader sense, I have the same attitude towards the current situation in the world. I have little influence over it and I watch it from the sidelines. Wait, that’s not entirely true... Sometimes I worry about the things that do affect me, such as inflation and the tight housing market. 

But despite that, I see a bright future. I think that in five years time I will have my own house and of course a nice job. What kind of job that is exactly? Well, time will tell I guess.” [Frank van den Nieuwenhuijzen]