Heyhey,

Since you ended up on this page you are either lost/bored or want to know who I am and/or why I chose to do a board year. If the first one is the case, I must say, you have done a pretty impressive job to end up here by accident. But hopefully, the latter one applies, so let me start telling something about myself. And yeh we start at the really beginning: 17 February 2001, Maarssen.

I am not too surprised if you have jumped up from your chair, because that is a reaction that I am used to getting by now. For some reason, the birth year 2001 triggers a lot. A nice fact: we are the first board that has board members born in the third millennium. Since I am doing my board year during my third year of AM, the fast mathematicians (as you hopefully all are ;), will have calculated that I was far from 18 when starting at the university.

The reason for this goes back to already the first year of primary school. Already then I was eager to learn and liked puzzles/games, which made me having done all the educational materials of the first (and second) group in my first half year at primary school. During the years after I found out that I also liked sharing this enthusiasm by helping people (most of the time with 'math'). Besides in the school classes, I also could let my enthusiasm go on the ice, the hockey field and (I realized later, too rarely) my guitar.

After primary school, I had besides the many sports trainings the pleasure of a free cycling training from and towards my secondary school in Utrecht: Christelijk Gymnasium Utrecht. 
Here must be said that, contrary to the name might suggest, I think that it was almost one of the most atheistic school there exist. To illustrate, we did not even have a free day on 'Goede Vrijdag'.
After my first year of secondary school, I stopped with hockey to focus more on ice skating. This resulted in many participations in 'regional championships'. Although in the beginning I always said that I was not a sprinter, more a 1500m/3km skater, the only NK I went was 'super sprint'.

This passion for ice skating is probably one of the reasons why I ended up studying in Enschede, because who does not want to live only 10 minutes cycling from the second-best speedskating hall of the Netherlands?!? However, ice skating made room for strength trainings, athletics and soccer with FC Abacus. Another reason for Enschede was the nice atmosphere, friendly down-to-earth people and the big green campus with the woods surrounding it.

Choosing a study was a lot harder than choosing a university. Since I liked a lot of subjects on secondary school (especially biology), I have looked at a lot of different studies ranging from Bewegingswetenschappen ('Human movement sciences') and Biomedical Engineering to ATLAS and Industrial Design Engineering. Especially the choice between Industrial Engineering and Management and Applied Mathematics was a hard one. Although I do not like to postpone things, I only made my final decision the day before my summer vacation by signing out for IEM. I feared that AM was too hard/abstract for me, but it turned out that I made the right decision. Not only the study, but especially all the people W.S.G. Abacus I started to really like. You may, therefore, not be surprised that I did several committees (Christmas diner, prom, sports day, PixCie and Twick-In 2020) and joined the Open Days team.

As most of you probably know, I like learning, helping people and, especially, knowing what is going on. Therefore, it may not be surprising that I became the Officer Educational Affairs.
As I said before, I do not like to postpone things, including writing this piece about myself. Therefore, I cannot say much about my experience as a board yet. However, from my first week, I can say that I like the contact with the members of Abacus and other board members and I am happy to help or play a game (or two or more...).
If you have not spoken to me yet, I am looking forward to our first encounter and else to see you again :)

With kindest regards,
Anouk Beursgens
Officer Educational Affairs of the 53rd board of W.S.G. Abacus