Graduation on 1 July!

By Laura van der Wal

I am graduating AUC today. After I send this last email to Anne with my second blogpost and my final report, I will start getting ready to go to Carré. I do not feel nervous yet about graduation, nor proud or sad for that matter, but I expect a whole bunch of feelings to hit me somewhere soon.

First of all, I want to give a big shout out to this amazing course for being able to get me newly excited about the wonders of AUC and its people. After coming back from exchange in the beginning of my third year, I only had one more semester to go at AUC, in which I also had to write my capstone. Before returning to Amsterdam, I promised myself to not be the third-year student that does not engage anymore. I vowed to still go to the events, to make an effort to meet new people and to try my hardest for all my courses. This did not happen, not very surprisingly. I returned to my comfortable group of friends, did not attend many of the events and certainly did not feel inspired by each of my courses. 

However, upon handing in my capstone and this final semester almost coming to an end, I started Peace Lab. It changed my whole attitude. My main challenge academically has always been my worries for the future. I am very good at pressuring myself to do too much, because I think I will lack behind if I do not always work hard. 

During our trip in Kosovo, I tried to reflect upon this and think a lot about my future. The different organizations that we visited, provided me with perspectives of how my future could look like. This enabled me to think about what it was that I actually want to do with my life, instead of trying to build my CV. 

Standing at this crossroad between my bachelors and whatever there is to come, Kosovo helped me become calmer. I see similarities in the way I am scared about the future and the people in Kosovo are scared about the future. However, I make myself scared even though I have all the privileges of traveling, studying where I want and significant economic freedom. And, the people in Kosovo remain courageous even though they are ‘trapped in a cage’. The people I have met, taught me patience, courage, confidence and made me realize that it is also okay if you do not know what the future holds. 

The people in Kosovo urged me to let go of this worry for the future and live more in the moment. In addition, I have made new friends at AUC, which was very unexpected during my last few weeks. I can confidently say that I fully engaged again in this last month of my journey, as I had promised to myself.

In this way, Peace Lab 2019 enabled me to get out of my AUC comfort zone again, just before the very end of it (when it would have been too late). And for this, I will be forever grateful.