“I think the education here at TU Delft is way too technical. It’s good in one way, but you don’t really come into contact with real world applications. I have eight friends studying mechanical engineering and only one of them really likes the technical side of mechanical engineering. The other seven chose it because of what you can do later on with it.
For myself, I realised that a purely technical education was not my thing so I decided to take a year off my studies and join the board of YesDelft Students. It is technical, but it’s also about what you can do with technology. You can take a technology and start your own company, you can hire engineers to do the technical things and you can run the social side and the economic side combined with the technology.
‘You learn a lot about people’
It’s a really innovative group to be involved with. When I first started they said, ‘We did it like this last year, but if you want to do something totally different that you think will work go ahead.’ Personally, I’ve learned more in the last two months on the board than in the last few years of studying. It’s very interesting interacting and working on the team and the committees that you have to manage. You learn a lot about people. My personal function is business affairs. Two days a week I’m in Rotterdam and Amsterdam visiting companies and it’s interesting to see what they’re about, how they work.
It’s also interesting that a lot of old board members hang around and go to work for a YesDelft startup after they finish here. This experience sticks with you.”
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Heather Montague / Freelance writer
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