What I miss the most in the school is the continuing of teaching us things. I want to have the feeling I’m gaining knowledge. Ofcourse it is good that they teach us how to be independent.That we have to find things out ourself if we want to understand it, can be amazing. But we have an amazing set of teachers who all are specialised and good in something cool. Why do they not share that with us more often? Give us more lectures, smaller assignments, suggest books or documentaries. I need more in my mind, I don’t only want to be creative, I also want to speculate and think. Those things go hand in hand. Give us more food for thought.

And why are we not being part of the ‘bigger’ thing. We are living in a designed bubble. Which is strange if you take in account that we are designing for the outside world. How can we do that if we are not being more connected with that world. Why are we so closed off ? Isn’t there a need for more input from outside. At least I need more. Or school has a good reputation, but all the students are being so closed in their networking. Me as well. I miss the opportunity of working together with students or people who are totally not in our ‘field’ but have their own. 

Like I told you before, I started posting my projects outside of the walls. I want to hear feedback from people who are not ‘spoiled’ with design. To see what they are noticing, they would look at it different. Sometimes I love how amazed those people react on what I do. That gives me energy, they tell me how incredibly beautiful something is. Why don’t we share our work not more with the outside. 

The school is a good place, but give us the space to fail and crawl back up again. Feedback should be there to help us further, not to burn us down. Luckily that never happened in LAB, I always felt you guys gave the space for this. The feedback sessions where very nice and helpful, giving me new inspiration which is important. Don’t change too much. Only make sure that the expectations of LAB don’t rise out, cause that makes people afraid. 

Starting to work with what I thought was fascinating and stop worrying about the results or the opinions of others was AMAZING.  So let me explain why this was so amazing. First of all the inspiration sources came from everywhere and I felt like I was exploding with ideas. LAB helped me with putting these thoughts into reality and write those struggles down. I guess that this trimester I started realising that I should do what I want to do. Towards the end I noticed some major changes. Feeling more secure of my own work, I was proud of what I did. What is a great feeling to have.

Being able to reflect on your own work is a good skill. Although I would easily make the mistake in the beginning of reflecting during the making. Which never works, cause then you stop yourself from being open.

The project I am most proud of is the Wiggler. Just because it started as a small idea and then it really became something big. Last year I didn’t work that much in the workshops, I kind of avoided them. But now it made me feel so good, working with my hands is so amazing. Also it helped me being less afraid of making mistakes. The freedom of LAB was in the beginning a hell but in the end it was such a relief.

Like you already mentioned, the groupwork really worked for me. There are for me two things that can happen with groupwork, or they take all my energy or they give me energy. In this case, it gave me a lot. I kind of started to understand better how to function within a group. You don’t need a leader, just make sure that everyone their task is clear. But most of all, that everyone is doing in the group what they want and what they are good in. Communicate, let people grow and be open to everyone their input. That’s what we did, what I did. Then it just goes natural, even if the some collaboration seem a bit vague. You also have to know when something is not working, it’s okay to admit that, let it go. I realise now, even more then before, that I really do want to work in groups. Even though I am fine as an einzelganger, I need the energy sometimes of other people pushing me to the max. 

I found the answer on my ‘what the hell am I doing here’ question. (Or it found me) I want to change something. I want to contribute something, share my opinions and my view on things. That something is very vague, but that will shape itself on the way. That was the whole reason why I choose this school above something like economics. I saw my change to learn how to communicate my thoughts into bigger things. That brought me also to my second thought, why am I in the food department?

For that I didn’t had an answer and that was actually the answer. Sometimes I find myself being too much of an idealist, so the idea of what the department could be was all wrong. A slap in my face and it took me way too long to get over it. So instead of making the best out of it or just leaving, I froze.

Anyway, the decision was kind of made, I had to leave the department.

Although that would not fix my problems with LAB at all. LAB was a bit scary for me in the first place. Same with the department, the idea of what LAB should be froze me. I was afraid of doing something that was not interesting. Of course now I realise that is stupid, cause doing something you love will become interesting if you put the time in it. So finally after I got the right attitude, I dared to just go for it. Fascinated with mirrors as I was, I just decided to do it. Don’t think, just make.

That’s what I did. Please for the next trimester, let people know that they don’t have to make a badass robot to succeed. But that working with small things that they find fascinating is also just fine.

Sorry for not just answering the questions, I needed more ‘freedom’ in writing everything down. 

I think I can say that normally I am not a very sensitive person. Not even very insecure, that is something I kind of have overgrown. Or at least I thought. But the second year is hard on me and I am doubting more than ever. The first year was all very organized, as organized as the school gets of course, but there was a structure. Everything was new and exciting, so before it lost its shiny ‘newness’ glow I enjoyed every moment of it.  Now and then I would doubt my work, especially because I could compare it to the 50 other students doing the same assignment. Although it made me realize everyone is good in something different.

The school has this way of making you starting to dig into things you would normally not dig into. So in the first year I already bumped into problems and I got to know myself in this whole new way, but all for the better. I figured out my own way to deal with this and like I said everything went fine. The first year gave me an idea of what I was good in and that made me actually more secure of what I wanted to do. Starting the second year gave me this whole new energy. I thought I could go way more into things, I could really start growing. With this in my head I looked forward to this ‘new’ year.

I actually don’t know where it went wrong exactly. But after the first two weeks I lost all these positive thoughts about myself. The last time I felt so insecure was when puberty hit me, so I was not used to this kind of feelings. That was when I started to completely bring myself down. Everything I did was not good enough or interesting enough. Not only in LAB but also in my department. I now think it was a combination of maybe not being in the right department and still holding on to this idea of structure. There was no structure, or actually you should give yourself structure.

You see I don’t know how I can exactly explain it . But I always pictured this period of my life in a different way. I thought that I would study something which would contain more ‘books’, lets say I pictured myself studying economics. Living in a city like Utrecht, Amsterdam or Groningen where most of my old friends are. Having this huge social life outside school, being part of a student club and playing sports. And now most of these things are not true, which in the first year not really bothered me. Only these last months, this old idea started to come back into my mind. Why am I doing something that makes me so tired? It takes all my creativity and sometimes that is not even enough. I spend so much time inside the school and I start living in this bubble of the academy life which I actually don’t like. I don’t see my old friends as often as I wish, I actually don’t even see my parents that often. All those things started to grow on me. What the hell am I doing in this school?

My whole motivation of going on was gone, the only thing that made me stay was that my parents did so much for me to get me here. The feeling that I owed them to at least try a full trimester made me stay. Only I don’t want to do something that doesn’t make me happy, why would I? Why would I do something in this world that makes me feel bad, especially cause I have a choice. Having the luxury of having a choice should be used. Anyway, I decided to stay the trimester. Also for the first time I decided not to talk with others about it until I organized my mind. This whole train of thoughts finally came to a conclusion “ fuck it all ”. That made all the difference.