I am a firm believer that we are all just students here in the classroom of life. Everything from actually being in school, to learning to use the public transport or communicating with another human being, all is just a study. Like with any course, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

For me, coming to the Netherlands has been somewhat a peak in this curve. It has given me the opportunity to ground myself and to learn so much about who I am and what I would like to be. Both on a personal and professional level, the Dutch culture has repeatedly taken me out of my comfort zone as it may have with so many others like who travelled across the globe to be here. 

But today, sitting on the other side of a degree, in my comfortable office job, observing carnaval from a distance, I cannot even fanthom just how much cultural integration has helped. The extent to which every organization, every friend, every stranger I have come in contact with here has left an impression or influence that I still carry around. It has shaped me, prepared me for my own future.

Learning may have started for me at my study Mechatronics. But it definitely did not stop there. My learning curve was a steep hill climb with these beautiful vantage points along the way in the disguise of my deepest connections. My learning curve post school, while it's just starting, is less daunting to me now. Because I know in my heart how beautiful the top of that hill will look in this largely flat country.

Rina Manjrekar (22) is a former student Mechatronics at Fontys School of Engineering. After graduating cum laude last summer, she now tries to find her way in the 'real' world. Here you can find her earlier columns for Bron.

Let’s talk about something generic: the Dutch weather. Both the Dutch people and internationals love discussing the weather, mostly because it has such a strong unpredictable personality. It also does not just stop at that. After moving to the Netherlands from a tropical country I realized for the first time that the weather could

Now, I do not know how accurate this is, and I am no doctor, but I do believe my first year here I went through something called weather depression. I counted 18 days, 18 consecutive days with not a ray of sunshine. I would wake up in the dark, eat lunch in the dark, get back home in the dark. 

I was lost. I was in a constant state of fatigue and misery. I did not understand why. I did not want to meet anyone or leave my room,  and most days I did not even want to grab a nice hot shower. I felt like another person.

I realize a lot of the students who come here from overseas, especially tropical countries, may experience this to some degree. Please believe me, you are not alone. I assure you even Dutch people feel this way. 

Any spectrum of distress you feel that matches the grey skies, can be communicated with your teachers, your friends, or anyone who will listen. Take the necessary steps to check your mood, try to build a routine and if nothing works, seek out professional help. Take it from me, hiding in your winter fortress, as warm as it may be is not a safe haven. I promise you the sunshine will come soon

Knowledge is power. Information is key. As an assiduous engineer, these are the words I live by. However, in recent times it has become increasingly clear that sometimes perhaps, ignorance is bliss.

The heavy influx of COVID related information has been nothing short of overwhelming for all of us. For me as an expat, a recent graduate and an international student, it means opening the door to unprecedented anxiety.

 I have been reading and reading about the various points of view on the theories of vaccination. On the freedom of choice. The rising numbers of COVID cases, the pain and suffering around the globe. While this saddens me and confuses me to a degree beyond my imagination, what is more conflicting is the urge to be able to reason for these theories. I attempt, almost religiously, to understand each side of the argument and try (to no avail) to reach a common ground.

Regardless of whatever one’s opinion may be, we can all agree we all deserve kindness.

This December I was meant to be with my family after three long years. After much distress to all of us around the uncertainty of this situation, we persevered and today we are together. I believe that this is the point I am trying to make. No one has it easy. Be kind.

And, well, sometimes just stick your head in the sand, much like an ostrich. Because perhaps ignoring the facts and facing the emotional energy of this situation might bring us closer together to ending this suffering.

Rina Manjrekar (22) is a former student Mechatronics at Fontys School of Engineering. After graduating cum laude last summer, she now tries to find her way in the 'real' world. Here you can find her earlier columns for Bron.

This Monday marks the beginning of the International Student Week. A perhaps strange concept, celebrating the strangers of this city. I look back upon my first months in the city of EIndhoven, when I really felt like an outsider and how today it feels like I have built a life for myself amidst the chaos.

Experiencing GLOW last week, showing the city to new friends, it was surprising to me how quickly this city has become home. How I know the busiest hours, the shortcuts to get somewhere, the best places to get sushi. When I got here, four years ago as an international student, I had no sense of direction, the spoken language and the numerous peculiarities of this city. Yet today, walking through the city center feels like coming home.

Most international students, much like myself, enter this city with an unfamiliarity. The bowling pins next to the station, the never-ending bike paths and of course the crowd of students passing each day through the Centraal Station.

The first month it felt like everything was mocking me, reminding me that I was not from here. It was all so overwhelming, yet we find our feet, walking the same route every day. We watch the Dommel over the bridge and learn the bike routes. Before we know it, we are exchanging pleasantries in Dutch to the bus drivers and at the local Albert Heijn. Before we know it, this city starts to feel like home.

During this week, I would invite everyone to celebrate that strangeness, that unfamiliarity you feel as an international student. I promise you, very soon this place will feel like home. You will begin to adore all the peculiarities of the culture here. Until all that is left of being ‘international’ is that you were not born here. But perhaps that is what we ought to celebrate this week, the immense ability of the students to acclimate. To realize that just because we are alone, does not mean we cannot make it a home.

Rina Manjrekar (22) is a previous student Mechatronics at Fontys School of Engineering. After graduating cum laude last summer, she now tries to find her way in the 'real' world. Here you can find her earlier columns for Bron.

Eindhoven is changing colours. I sit on my balcony staring out at the trees that are slowly turning from green to orange to yellow. The leaves falling, in preparation for the winter. I have always felt that Eindhoven is at its most beautiful in this weather. If you take away the strange spurs of rain, the entire city feels as though it is blushing at us.

Coming from a tropical country that pretty much only experiences lots of heat and rain, the autumn season always fascinated me. As a student, I would walk to Fontys hearing the leaves rustling under my feet and think to myself how beautiful this must look to a voyeur. However, this exact time also marks the season of a lot of individuals falling sick and of course the first round of exams for the year.

As I spent the last five days cooped up at home, drinking scorching hot tea, I have been reminiscing on this time four years ago as a student. The strange combination of admiration for the changing weather but also sudden panic of feeling fatigued and unwell and stressed with the pressure of doing well in the first round of exams. If you find yourself in this position or know someone in this position: give them a hot cup of tea and breathe in the fresh autumn air. Enjoy the colours in and around you because I truly believe ‘tis the season to be jolly. Feel better everyone and good luck with the exams!

Rina Manjrekar (22) is a previous student Mechatronics at Fontys School of Engineering. After graduating cum laude last summer, she now tries to find her way in the 'real' world. Here you can find her earlier columns for Bron.

Eindhoven city, in its present moment, is a place bustling with life and energy from its newest guests: the students of the academic year of 2021-2022. As I move on to the next stage of my life, I cannot help but feel reminiscent of the new school year. The excitement of meeting new people, getting new schedules, planning new parties.

Perhaps in a rudimentary ‘back-in-my-day’ way, this column is just a message to all the new students to enjoy their upcoming student life.

Walking the line between being an adult and being a student is really very fine, especially here in the Netherlands. However, I have come to realize the four years spent in the halls of Fontys will forever be a part of my treasure chest of happy ‘childlike’ memories.

Do not misunderstand me, they were not all happy moments – but looking back on them, there was a certain simplicity and honesty in those moments, that I am unsure I will ever again possess. There was a naivety of the minimalism of life, there was a strange, unique energy that drove all of us to live in the moment.

The years of your student life will by far be the most reckless, carefree years of your life to come. I feel the need to encourage everyone to make the most of it. I feel the need to say to my peers to try new things. Explore new places. Meet new people. Push your boundaries. Because the safety of your school and school friends, is the best place to explore your discomforts and understand yourself.

Coming out of school there will be more money but less time, more opportunities but less courage, more wisdom but less carefreeness.

I for one strive to be the person I was back in school. Even with only a few months behind me, I have started to notice the changes, the allure of a mundane life. There are days I wake up with exasperation towards it, but there are also days I value not having to worry about spending an extra fifty euros in a restaurant.

In the end, all of life is holding a good balance. But your student life, living your best student life, is a subtle art.

Rina Manjrekar (22) is a previous student Mechatronics at Fontys School of Engineering. After graduating cum laude in July 2021, she now tries to find her way in the 'real' world. Here you can find her earlier columns for Bron.

Here comes a new beginning, a new academic year, a new start. As Fontys and Eindhoven welcome hundreds of students from all over the world, I sit humbly behind my computer looking for work.

As you may or may not know, I am an engineer. July 15^th 2021, I stood on a stage in het Evoluon and accepted my Bachelor of Science in Mechatronics. I graduated cum laude and made everyone around me proud. I made myself proud. I walked out of there feeling like I was on top of the world. That was, until I applied for work.

Now let me preface this and just say I realize I am in a very fortunate position be in the technical field and get the kind of opportunities that I have gotten (even if it may be that in the end I did not get the job). However, the pressure, the disappointment, the anxiety is no different.

Going for my first interview, I had no idea what to prepare, who to trust, where to ask help. There is not really a ‘Real World 101’ class we are offered at school. Just like many colleagues I did not know what salary to ask for, what background of the company to study, decide which precise area of engineering I wanted to work in. Just like all my colleagues, I got it wrong plenty of times, and it broke my spirit.

I went through the same rollercoaster thinking perhaps I am doing something completely wrong, or despite my excellence at school am I simply not good enough for this career?

The thing I realize now is this is just a part and parcel of the journey. We all face successes and failures. Now that I am once again in a fortunate position to have some good offers, I think, maybe I needed to learn this.

To teach myself the story I tell at an interview, to really evaluate a company before applying there. And mostly: to understand how I want my career to look. If you are a student starting your study this year or graduated like me or anywhere in between, I cannot tell you if our schools will ever teach us this, all I can assure you is there is work for everyone out there. The rejections are just an inevitable and important lesson to learn. The bright careers we are all gunning for, they start with stark, bare beginnings.

Rina Manjrekar (22) moved to the Netherlands four years ago from Malaysia. She is a previous student Mechatronics at Fontys School of Engineering. After graduating cum laude in July 2021, she now tries to find her way in the 'real' world. Here you can find her earlier columns for Bron.

I got vaccinated yesterday. My first wall of defence against the coronavirus. Now, I personally am terrified of needles. To go get vaccinated by myself was nothing short of an adventure for me and my loved ones. My family back home, worried that I was going to be sick or in pain after. My friends here wondering if I would be okay and mostly curious of what the process would be like for them, when their turn comes.

I have to say, even as an international student living here, the process was smooth as ever for me. I was given all the necessary instructions, and everyone was very helpful. As I dreaded my walk to the vaccination station, I only saw warm smiles. Everyone enthusiastic about bringing us all one step closer to a new normal. I took my vaccine, which was honestly like a little ant bite, and moved on to wait.

As I sat there waiting, fearing if I would have some sort of a reaction to it, I found myself only filled with joy and hope. Hope that perhaps we will have a normal summer this year. Hope that perhaps we can all go back to work and study. We can see each other again and hug each other again without the paranoia staying with us for days. Above all, we could all go back to our home countries soon enough!

So while my fear of needles in still very persistent, finding this needle in a haystack of disappointments from the past year has substantiated this metaphor for me. Perhaps, needles aren’t all that bad, but I guess we will see about that after this summer.

Rina Manjrekar (22) is an international student in the final year of her study Mechatronics at Fontys School of Engineering. She moved to the Netherlands four years ago from Malaysia. Here you can find her earlier columns for Bron.

With the start of a new season upon us, comes beautiful weather. And this year with this beautiful weather come some even more beautiful goodbyes. With the promise of graduation, comes the promise of new adventures and the inevitable reality of leaving some precious things behind.

As an international student, living away from home for the last four years, the one thing I hold dearest to me is friendship. You see, the international class of any study, is quite unique. We are all moved away from home, anxious and excited, bright-eyed, and curious. We all find each other, almost as a play of fate, and become a tight knit family.

For all the birthdays, the occasions, the heartbreaks, the exam periods, we turn to each other for support and solidarity. Strangely enough because we are all we have that’s within our grasp. So, we hold on, and sometimes so tightly that we never realize there will be a day we will have to let each other go.

This week, this heartbreaking realization dawned upon me. As I graduate next month, I will be also be saying goodbye to one of my closest friends. He will be packing and go on his way, back home. I sit here wondering, the peculiarity of this connection. We came from different countries, different homes, different social, financial, emotional, racial, and religious backgrounds. Yet somehow, we found each other, and we chose each other.

We chose the simple things, lunch at the local döner place, studying for exams at the library, going to the market, getting beers before class. We were just having fun, without once realizing that perhaps we were creating memories that would last us a lifetime. That’s the thing about friends, especially international friends: they are the family you choose. So, with this beautiful weather, I will gather the courage to say a beautiful goodbye, to a beautiful friend. Because that’s what this family deserves.

Rina Manjrekar (22) is an international student in the final year of her study Mechatronics at Fontys School of Engineering. She moved to the Netherlands four years ago from Malaysia. Here you can find her earlier columns for Bron.

This is a special blog, because this is not going to be about me. This is about particular persons who very, very important to me. My teachers.

In the past four years, as I have come to grow as an engineer and an individual, these precious people have contributed so much of their time and energy to me. Yet time and again, I have felt like while they were busy filling the voids in my life, there was one running much deeper in theirs. Every time they worked late, did more than required, answered that after-hour email to help their student, some part of their personal life got stripped away – slowly but surely.

In the past year, this has only become significantly worse. As the teachers lose physical contact with their students, as their personal and professional life blur even further into one big mess, as their own children are at home expecting their attention, their 'work children' have an exam coming up and need the attention too. How do you choose?

Teaching is what I call the noblest joyless profession. While they are literally cultivating the next generation of doctors, lawyers, artists and engineers – they are being frowned upon for giving too much homework. Or for not giving enough. For doing their job or not doing their job. Everyone has an opinion of how their job can be done better, yet so few actually take it up.

These teachers have made such a remarkable impression on my life, so much so they almost convinced me to want to be a teacher at some later point in my life. Yet, when I see their struggles I feel terrified. You see, I am not gracious enough to give so openly and willingly and receive so little in return. It makes me think: perhaps that’s why mental exhaustion is called a burnout. While these lights burn brighter to lighten up my darkest days, they are slowly fading away themselves.

If you are a teacher or have been one, and you have genuinely enjoyed your profession, I can give nothing but my sincerest and utmost gratitude to you. Thank you for caring.

Rina Manjrekar (22) is an international student in the final year of her study Mechatronics at Fontys School of Engineering. She moved to the Netherlands four years ago from Malaysia. Here you can find her earlier columns for Bron.

Humans are the only living creatures that have this strange concept of time. We have numbered our days, printed them out big and bold on a calendar, and plastered it to our walls. Every day we wake up to do the old same things, yet every day we count one day up. In my eyes, it is a futile effort to fantasize control over something that is otherwise entirely out of our control. 

However, this strange concept, enables all the short-term goals we have. Our yearly birthday, our monthly parties, our weekly yoga classes. We mark our calendars and wait patiently for time to do its job: pass us by.

One such important milestone I have marked and count up to, almost obsessively, is my graduation ceremony. On the day of 15 July 2021, I will earn my Bachelor of Science in Mechatronics from the Fontys University of Applied Sciences. I will be an engineer.

I shudder just at the thought of it. I shudder in anticipation. What will the ceremony look like? What dress will I hear? How should I do my hair? Do I have to speak? My mind battles these questions as I watch time pass me by. Until suddenly, I realized: this is it. The last two months of my life as a student. The last two months of being excused for making bad decisions, for procrastinating, for making excuses about how the dog ate my homework.

We humans are strange. I have looked forward to graduation since before I even started my bachelor’s. Yet feeling it so up close to me, all I think of now is the things I want to do one more time as a student. Wasn’t I done with school? Wasn’t I ready for the real world? Yet now, I want to turn back time. If only time worked that way. The Big Day is coming, whether I like it or not, and with it all the uncertainty, pride, and excitement of having made it this far and the adventures future holds.

Rina Manjrekar (22) is an international student at Fontys School of Engineering. She moved to the Netherlands four years ago from Malaysia. Here you can find her earlier columns for Bron.

Last week the world celebrated International Women’s Day, 2021. Now, I will be honest here, I am not big on these days. I have never believed you need a day to celebrate a person or relationship, especially not celebrate equality: a basic human right. Celebrations are for what’s out of the ordinary, right?

Yet this year, it was a bit different. I could not help but feel a certain sense of pride being a woman in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering en Mathematics) field. You see the gender gap that everyone has fought so passionately to overcome, is still blatantly obvious in the STEM fields.

Growing up, women around the world have beauty queens, stellar artists, caregivers and star athletes to look up to. However, if you are interested in STEM this is rare. Rarer still if it is corporate STEM. While I bow my head in gratitude and awe to the women who have made it here, they are not as easy to come by and hardly ever highlighted in mass media.
As a 15-something-year old girl who wanted to become an engineer it was frightening, having the constant reminder that perhaps this field is not for me. The misgivings that perhaps, I ought to take up marketing. Or nursing. Or pretty much anything more stereotypically ‘feminine’ than something scientifical or technological, something beta.

Yesterday, for the first time in years, the gap stared back at me. The only difference is, one step away from graduation in Mechatronics, it did not intimidate me anymore. I realized I am going to make it, and while I am not shattering any glass ceiling, I hope I am able to wave the white flag for other girls wanting to make their way here. I hope all women around me in STEM today think of the efforts we have taken to come this far. And how our hard work makes it easier for the women from here on out.

I am positive, slowly but surely, we would not have to warn another 15-something-year-old girl with an engineering dream to mind the gap!

Rina Manjrekar (22) is an international student in the final year of her study Mechatronics at Fontys School of Engineering. She moved to the Netherlands four years ago from Malaysia. Here you can find her earlier columns for Bron.

I got all dressed up for work today. It was truly an occasion. It was an occasion because I could go into work for the first time in seven days! Now I know it does not sound all that bad. But paint this picture in your head: you are an intern, international intern, who is all but two weeks on the job, who knows barely anybody at the company and who is NEVER THERE.

And riddle me this: What is a home office? I understand if you are in management that you have a separate designated spot in your house to work from. But as a student? A home office? I have ONE room. I eat there, cook there, sleep there, drink beer with my friends there. I do not have a home office. Lately, I do not think I have either a home or an office. I am stuck somewhere in between the two and the roles they bring.

Yet today, as I sat in my massive 9^th floor workplace, in my formal work clothes and with the bright warm sun hitting my face, I could not help when a small piece of me was missing my own tiny cold desk. The desk where I sat in my pyjamas. Where I ate warm lunch in silence, only two steps from my bed, and updated work socials with ‘@Home Office’. Today, @Home Office, redefined irony for me.

Rina Manjrekar (22) is an international student in the final year of her study Mechatronics at Fontys School of Engineering. She moved to the Netherlands 4 years ago from Malaysia. Here you can find her other columns for Bron. 

The start of this week marked the start of the spring semester for all Fontys students. While for all Dutch citizens it marked the coldest time in a decade. For me, it was the start of my graduation internship.

As if the idea of starting the last, most important thing of my study was not enough to make my spine shiver, the universe decided to add to it with the icy cold winds. I sat there solemnly Sunday evening, nourishing my cold feet wondering, what else could possibly go wrong?

Come Monday morning, I was pleased to see public transport had resumed and I would have a somewhat normal day. So, there I was, all wrapped up and ready to be shipped off to make my career. There I stood at the bus stop, with hope in my frozen hands, for thirty minutes. Waiting. Patiently waiting. To see the arriving bus.
It never did.

Disheartened and essentially frozen by now, I returned home giving in to my cold feet. Thinking I’ll start tomorrow, if the universe allows it. I dialed my boss to let him know I would not be able to make it on my very first day. As I was preparing to give up, like a ray of sun on the blanket of snow he said: ‘Shall I come pick you up?’. Just like that, 20 minutes later, we sat in his car making small talk about who even remembers what.

Such is the way of life and adventure. Looking back on it, I wished more first job days started this way: no awkwardness, no formal handshakes, no conference rooms. Just a student battling her cold feet and her boss saving the coldest day of the decade.

Rina Manjrekar (22) is an international student in the 4^th year of her study Mechatronics at Fontys School of Engineering. She moved to the Netherlands 4 years ago from Malaysia. Here you can find her other columns for Bron.