Being A Leidener

As I graduated from my LLM programme at Leiden University, my journey as a blogger at the Leidener also comes to an end. The best way to say farewell to The Leidener family seems like doing what I have been doing for months now: to share my experience for all the future Leideners.

Being a blogger myself with the short stories I wrote before starting to write at The Leidener, I had an idea of what it would be like to join The Leidener. I already was reading the experience of previous Leideners before I came to Leiden, which helped me greatly to have an idea of what it actually is like to be a student of Leiden University and live in Leiden. The places to go, the workload of the programmes, things to do in the Netherlands, ways to budget and so on. Thus, in the beginning, my main purpose was to pay this community who helped me with such precious information I wouldn’t find anywhere else back and help the newcomers with experiences of my own.

However, rather than being a duty to write a couple of times per month, it became an important part of my experience in Leiden.  It changed the way I looked at things and made me always have the same question in my mind: “Is it something I can share with others?” Most importantly, now that I am looking back at all the entries I posted, I also created a nice archive of my days in Leiden, both things I did and the emotions of specific points in time, such as the day finished my master thesis or all my lectures. While running in between other responsibilities, I probably wouldn’t take the time to note all these if it wasn’t for The Leidener. Another nice moment which gave me great satisfaction and proud was when my two articles on The Leidener was shared on the official account of Leiden University, which ensured me that they were of help to new international students.

Lastly, joining The Leidener also means becoming a part of the family of international students from so many different countries and cultures who meet at one common point of desire to share their experience. I enjoyed reading the articles of my fellow Leideners greatly and learnt and was inspired by many of them. I could not thank enough to them and our administrative team who always was there for us and gave us the wide freedom to write whatever was on our minds.

As you would have guessed, I would recommend anyone who has something that they wish they would have known before coming to Leiden to join The Leidener and do their part in helping the new international students, as well as making their year in Leiden more memorable. Thank you The Leidener, and farewell.