Introduction Week

Monday morning, at 10 o'clock sharp, everyone sat down in the auditorium, excitedly waiting for the real start of our academic life. The dean welcomed us all, and after that a long presentation followed about the specifics of our education. Majors, minors, electives, programmes abroad, it was a lot to take in at one time! The staff members introduced themselves and when everyone started to drift off, it was time for some icebreakers. They let us 'speeddate' each other, we had to introduce ourselves to a random other person and then talk about a selected topic, such as the weather and our holidays, very academic of course. In the afternoon we had lunch with our mentors and group for the week, which was fun. Unfortunately I had to attend a funeral, so I couldn't be there. In the evening there was a party, where all the committees introduced themselves, as well as the student association 'Fortuna'.

On Tuesday we did a tour through The Hague, while we had to find the different mentors and answer questions in order to receive a letter. With those, we had to form a word. Dylan's group had figured the word out after they got the first letter, but it was still fun and they did the whole tour. In the afternoon we did some more team building games, which was not that interesting. In the evening we listened to the 1938 radio broadcast of 'War of the Worlds' by H.G. Wells, the book we were all supposed to read.

On Wednesday morning we talked about War of the Worlds, as it was the 'Dean's Choice' of this year. First he explained why it was so important and then some staff members discussed it with regards to their field of expertise. In the afternoon we had a nice beach party in Scheveningen, with sports activities, painting for Amnesty, and a barbecue.

On Thursday we had a lecture by the former secretary general of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (who is also my teacher!) followed by a mini-MUN, (Model United Nations), where all groups were assigned a country that we had to represent in the different committees. Dylan was the delegate of South-Africa on the topic of access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, I was the delegate of the United Kingdom on the topic of integrating indigenous peoples. Dylan hated it, haha! I'd participated in 'real' MUN's before so I knew how it worked. In the afternoon we had a Culture Expo, each group prepared two recipes that were typical for the country they represented, and afterwards we got to taste all of it. It was a delicious experience! After that we had an air band battle, my group was a complete failure but Dylan's got second place! (Unfortunately he didn't participate because he didn't feel well..)

On Friday we visited the International Criminal Court, which was extremely interesting! First we got a tour, then a very knowledgeable woman answered all of our questions and told us about the cases that they were processing now. Lastly they took us to the actual public galeries from where we got to see the court room. There was supposed to be a hearing that day, but unfortunately it was cancelled. We're planning on going back there, because we'd love to see how that works! In the afternoon we had another information session, about the workload that was ahead of us and the difference between 'foxes' and 'hedgehogs'. They want to train us all to become foxes, people who know a little bit of everything as opposed to being very knowledgeable in one field and seeing everything through that lens. We're basically going to be the bridges between different fields of expertise. In the evening there was -of course- another party to finish it.
And so came a fun, but very, very tiring week to an end!