Dear reader,

 

I am Emile van der Veer and I am the secretary of the 56th board of W.S.G. Abacus. This text will be a short overview of me during my time as a board member and the years on the university leading up to eventually becoming the secretary of the 56th board of W.S.G. Abacus.

 

I am going to start my story at the start of my freshmen year: the Kick-In. I arrived in Enschede with not much more than a sleeping bag, a small bag of clothes and a bike. Very quickly, I felt at home when we started to play some board and card games with all the math people. I was also able to sleep on the couch of one of my dogroup parents, as I did not find my own room yet. 

 

Me not having a room yet very quickly turned into an issue when studying. I had to take the train back and forth to Amersfoort every day, during which I could not focus well on studying. I was also unable to stay long at any of the amazing activities of Abacus, at which I was starting to feel very welcome. When entering the university, I also wanted to continue playing roleplaying games like D&D, which was a game that I really enjoyed in highschool. Though this house issue was also holding me back a bit from staying on the campus until too late. Therefore, I was very happy when I was at one point able to find a place.

 

In my first year, I joined the freshmen committee and we organised some very nice activities. Although the mini-Almanac was finished embarrasingly late, I had a great time in this committee. This made me eventually also join more committees and organise other types of activities.

 

At one point, I found out what the board of Abacus was doing in a day, and I quickly got interested in becoming a board member myself. Around the end of my freshmen year, I was already joking around with the number 56 and a bit after the start of my second year I was sure I wanted to become a board member. Finally doing something else than studying, something fun, while doing something for this association that I have come to love. Something from which I can also learn a lot to finally get out of the constant grind of studying.

 

I applied to become a board member and a few months later, I was announced as the new candidate secretary of Abacus. During my candidate board period, I have come to get to know a whole lot of people and I was even able to get 16EC in the fourth quartile, which was far more than I expected to be able to actually get while being a candidate board member.

 

When we were eventually charged in as the new board of Abacus, we first had to clean the Abacus room, as the previous board wrapped the entire room in bubble wrap for our safety. We quickly started our board year enthusiastically and it has been an amazing time so far. Currently, I am still playing D&D every week, which I find very enjoyable. I even started hosting my own D&D campaign, which the entire group is enjoying a lot.

 

I am now looking forward to the rest of this board year, together with the rest of this amazing board. Hopefully you enjoyed reading a bit about me as much as I enjoyed writing a bit about myself.

 

Ready for take-off!