Aletta van Opstal BSc & Joost Jan Pannebakker BSc
Boardmembers MFVR
'Mom, I'm an adult, leave me alone.' Can you relate? Every student has a rebellious phase, where phrases like these are thrown out there without any hesitation. Once you start studying in the big city, you immediately feel like a grown up. Leaving home for the first time, going out with your friends, no one telling you what you can or cannot do. It sounds like music to our ears, until we gradually discover that things are really different. Life is not as easy as we thought. It is easier to do everything by foot than to mend your own bicycle tire, and making an appointment at the doctor's without your parents is actually terrifying. If you do decide to go shopping instead of ordering for the umpteenth time, groceries always turn out to be more expensive than expected. Especially cheese is quite expensive on a student's budget. There you are, in the supermarket, with no idea what adulthood actually means.
‘Groceries always turn out to be more expensive than expected.’
Fortunately, we are young and can adapt relatively easily to new situations. But then, it's March 2020. The faculty closes, students are sent home to barely come back for over a year, if at all. Life is at a standstill, physical social contact is reduced to the minimum. Suddenly your understanding of adulthood is different. Where you were actually mostly concerned about very practical things in your life, you are now concerned with mostly abstract things. You have to learn to deal with loneliness, and sometimes with the loss of a loved one. You learn to put things in perspective, and learn to appreciate the small positive points in life. Suddenly your process of maturity is accelerating in ways you had not anticipated.
In the meantime, we are more than a year on. We have had several waves of COVID-19, but most of the restrictions are now really being lifted. Even the nightclubs have reopened and the first parties have been thrown. There you are, in the supermarket in front of the refrigerator, without a mask. Doubly you look at the cheese, and you wonder if the moment is finally here. You think back over the past fifteen months, and decide to take the leap. You take the pack in your hand determinedly and put it in your basket. A discount pack, that is.
