Maybe I’m just really boring
“I’m from California, but I got an au pair job in the Netherlands. With the end of my gap year, I had to go back to school, so I looked at English language courses in every single European country. I found that the VUB has a major I’m interested in, which is also affordable.
My parents are supporting me, but next year they have to pay for my mother and my brother as well. In the Netherlands and Sweden fees were too high, so I couldn’t ask that of them.
I’m doing Social Sciences. In the third year you have to choose between sociology, political sciences and communication, but I’m not sure what I’ll choose. I would like to do a master’s in social linguistics. I don’t know what I will do after I graduate, I may go back to Korea to teach English. For now, I just really like school. I like learning things and not having a set plan for the future.
During the week, I live in a dilapidated house in Oudergem. I didn’t have heat until two weeks ago and there is mould in my room. But in the weekend, I go to my boyfriend in Haarlem. Today it only took four hours to get back. Normally it takes longer, because the buses are really unreliable and the train is expensive.
I have friends in the Netherlands, but not in Brussels. I feel like I don’t fit in, maybe because I don’t like partying. Maybe I’m just really boring.”
On the occasion of the VUB’s 50th anniversary, prof. dr. Martina Temmerman asked the students in her introductory course on journalism genres to make portraits of people on the VUB campus. The ‘snapshots’ resulting from the project Humans of the VUB offer a lovely cross section of life on our university campus in 2019/20.