Bar duty at a queer party in Wageningen is a remedy in these dark days. I have never done this before. I will soon leave this town and want to try something new before it is too late. Behind the bar, we dance to ABBA, and I am happy to be useful here. After the party, at three in the morning, a friend leans over the bar to inquire whether I have an empty wine bottle. When I ask her what it’s for, she replies: ‘to hold in my hand when I cycle home, as a self-defence weapon against creepy men’. Perhaps there are more dangers in Wageningen than I thought.
When I fear something, it is generally not related to a physical threat. In evolutionary terms, this is strange because it feels as if a tiger is chasing me down, while the actual “tiger” is the fact that finding an internship is more challenging than I thought. How do you cope with the fear that you may not be able to create a future for yourself and are doomed to remain in a student den in Wageningen forever with no hope of ever leaving?
How do you cope with the fear that you may not be able to create a future for yourself and are doomed to remain in a student den in Wageningen forever?
I take long hikes to outrun the tiger. I have just returned from an interview for my dream internship: rejected. It is almost four in the afternoon, and the sun has already dipped below the horizon. Twenty minutes later, I am walking in the dark in the rain while the path beneath my feet is not illuminated. With my thick, water-repellent coat and cranky mood, I feel sufficiently protected to chew on any threat this path may have in store for me. Come get some!
Once at home, drenched and in soggy shoes, I find my friend on the couch in a small, miserable heap. She has issues with her sense of balance due to a disruption in her vestibular system, temporarily preventing her body from distinguishing up from down. We find a remedy in recalibrating her balance, much like we would have to recalibrate the teacher’s smart board in school by tapping the pen in all four corners and the centre so that the computer would know where the pen is. Tilt your head back carefully, then to the side, and then quickly lie down. Position yourself in the x, y and z axes, and I hold your hand until the spinning stops.
Wine bottles, hikes, realigning yourself with your body and helping loved ones are apparently excellent remedies against stress. I am beginning to feel like I am the one chasing the tiger rather than the other way around. And if I face my internship fear long enough, it begins to shrink. So what? I may not get the internship of my dreams; there are plenty of other options. And thus, the tiger slowly becomes a rabbit. And then a fly. And then… splat! I squashed it against the wall. Gotcha!
Ilja Bouwknegt (25) is a master’s student in Forest and Nature Conservation. Ilja is interested in the relationship between humans and nature and prefers to try every hobby at least once. Currently, that is ceramics and Japanese literature. But writing remains the undisputed favourite.
I love this column, found it very uplifting! Thanks for writing it Ilja 🙂
Thanks Ananya! 🙂