The faculty association gives me motivation to continue to study

“When I started at the VUB, I was one year younger than most of my peers. I was 17 and didn’t know anyone because all my friends went to another university. To make things even worse I overslept on the first day of school and I got lost so I never really got to meet my new classmates. Until LWK entered class all of a sudden. Its members came in and explained that they would unite everyone. Afterwards, they took us to their headquarters and created an atmosphere of ‘we are your friends and we will always be there for you’. That was really awesome, I will always remember this event. I immediately started to talk with the members and friendships were made. This was really special for me because I had a place I belonged and felt like someone had my back.

In your first year at university, you know really little. By joining a student society, I learned a lot about growing up. Not only about organizing stuff, but also about their mentality and the period of hazing, the meaning behind it, about working together, accepting one another and supporting each other. Here at the VUB, the student societies are really tight-knit. In my opinion, the bond you create, not just in your faculty, but throughout the university, is really unique. It’s like a group of unconditional friends. It motivates me to keep studying.

I know it all sounds melodramatic, but I find these things really important. When I was 17, I didn’t know anything about these kinds of things. In three years’ time, I’ve learned a lot and I am still learning every day.”

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.