It all started back in the 2001 autumn when I, the secretary of the 55th board of Wiskundig Studiegenootschap Abacus, was born 55 days too early on the 28th of September. It was blistering inside my mother’s womb, I could not survive any longer over there; the temperature must have approached 55 degrees Celsius. Once I finally escaped the unbearable temperatures, I would go through my life as `Jorrit Wilmink’ and I started crying. Not because of my name, but it was pretty damn cold outside. Luckily for me, I had the blessing of living in an incubator for a couple of weeks, as my mass was only 1855 grams.

After living the first weeks of my life in the Enschede hospital, my parents took me all the way to Haaksbergen, a stunning 15.5 kilometres away from my birthplace. I lived there in peace for 2.55 years, until my mother gave birth to my little brother. Nowadays, I still live with my parents, as I got kicked out of `Huize Steriel’ after having lived there for 555 days. Huize Steriel was the home of Karst, a good friend of mine, and my fellow board members Chendo and Rutger. We did not really get kicked out, but Karst’s parents decided to sell the house, as Karst is going to study in Amsterdam, so we had to move out after our board year. (I fall through the basket here that I am writing my board piece weeks before the end of my board year.) Anyway, I did not have the urge to look for a new room, as I will be teaching high school students the first semester after my board year.

You are probably wondering (or not even remotely close) what the remainder of my life looks like, as that is what one expects you to tell in this annoyingly long board piece :p. Well, when I was four years old, I went to primary school at O.B.S. de Weert, located in Haaksbergen of course. I loved playing with LEGO, K’NEX, Kapla, Meccano, dominoes; everything that you could build things with. Next to this, I liked solving logic puzzles, suitable for my age, and playing educational games like Ambrasoft or Reader Rabbit (Robbie Konijn). No wonder I liked mathematics in primary school and I still do (think it is fun to solve logic puzzles). After elementary school, I learned that I could have skipped a class, but my parents did not want this to happen. I am glad that they made this decision; I cannot imagine that I was on another board than with my friends on 55.

When I was six, my parents asked me whether I wanted to join the `kabouters’. With this, they meant playing football at v.v. Haaksbergen for kids that were not old enough to play in a competition. I declined this offer, as my little me, was associating `kabouters’ with the logo of A.F.C. Ajax, and I thought that I had to play there, which I absolutely did not want as an F.C. Twente supporter. My little brother went to play at the kabouters and my parents took me to the pitch to watch. As soon as I realised this was a misunderstanding, I wanted to play at v.v. Haaksbergen too, which caused me to play for them two weeks later than my little brother. After my first training, it was already clear to me; that I could better try to save the ball than score. That was not a big success either, so from that moment on, my dream was to become a reserve goalkeeper at F.C. Twente. This year, I decided to quit playing for v.v. Haaksbergen, as I did not have the time to train during the week and I definitely did not want to play in a lower team. However, once in a blue moon, I substituted for another team that played on Saturdays. Once they had found out that I was quitting my Sunday (league) team, they wanted me to play for them. This was fun until one weekend I was helping at the Applied Mathematics Bachelor open days. My team still had to play, while I was unavailable. After a fight with the opponents, my team was banned from the competition and the team fell apart. This is when I started running in my free time. Let’s go for a great time at next year’s Batavierenrace! 

The day I became 16 years old, my father registered me for his dart team. I used to throw darts a lot when I was home, but from that day on, I was playing in a competition every Monday evening. Today, I am playing in a team with a couple of friends.

My eight years at grade school were fun, but I was relieved to go to high school, as my class would be less chaotic. (I was really a nerd back then during class hours.) I followed `Vvwo+’, which basically meant that the people who passed an additional test in the last grade, were `blessed’ to follow extra projects in the first three years of high school. The projects that we needed to set up our own play and perform separately for our parents and other high school freshmen were the most fun. In my third year, our high school introduced iPad education. I still think that this is one of the biggest mistakes a high school can possibly make. Paying attention in classes was not happening anymore, but I figured out how to do the bare minimum, play games on my iPad during classes, and still pass everything easily. 

After three years, I was eager to pick a curriculum for which I had to learn the least. I had an interest only in subjects like mathematics, physics, computer science and chemistry. For these subjects, you had to understand what you were doing instead of learning a shitload of information. This was the main reason that I did not pass a single English test in my last year, except for the final exam; I was just too lazy to learn all those words. As I picked additional mathematics and computer science, I had two fewer exams than everyone else because these subjects did not have a final exam. This caused me to take six exams only, three exact sciences and three reading tests for languages. You can imagine I was not stressed a single bit. 

It was already very soon quite clear that I wanted to study mathematics. It was the subject I liked the most for my whole life. I was not thinking of picking a studies job orientated but studying the thing I liked the best. My main doubts were about studying mathematics or physics. I liked physics, but I liked mathematics so much more. I visited the open days in Nijmegen for mathematics and (astro)physics and the open days in Enschede for applied mathematics and applied physics. Even though I liked astrophysics, I wanted to study mathematics, but I did not know where yet and whether I wanted to study applied mathematics or `regular’ mathematics. I thought it was time to be `student-for-a-day’. As I live near Enschede and did not want to look for a new home, I decided to go to Enschede first and hoped that I would like it. I was a student-for-a-day at the UT and I was lucky that I was assigned to Anouk, who would become the officer of educational affairs of the 53rd board of W.S.G. Abacus later on. It was a very nice and helpful day and I decided that I wanted to study applied mathematics in Enschede. 

It was too bad I only attended the study-related part of the Kick-In in my freshman year. It was a couple of nice days, but I could not really bond with the rest of my fellow students. Luckily, everything turned out to be fine and I got to know them better. I liked the Kick-In, so I became a do-group parent for the next two Kick-Ins. I was not active at Abacus at all during the first one-and-a-half years studying applied mathematics, until Anouk asked me to join the 2021 Sports day committee. I still had no idea what I was doing or what Abacus actually was, but it was a nice start. At the beginning of my third year at the UT, I decided that I would like to join the (A)bac(ch)us to tend beers once in a while. I started to attend more and more Abacus activities and before I lived together with Karst, Chendo and Rutger, I could always stay at Huize Steriel for a night after a drink. Later that year, Margriet, the officer of external affairs of the 54th board of W.S.G. Abacus, convinced me to join the 2022 Symposium committee, which I enjoyed a lot. Together with Rutger and Niels, I decided to join the Twick-In 2022 and apply for the 55th board of W.S.G. Abacus. 

At the moment of writing, the new kiddos are enjoying their first Kick-In. I hope that they will have a great time at Abacus and I wish the candidate board the best of luck in the upcoming academic year. But for the next two weeks, it is an honour for me to still be the secretary of Wiskundig Studiegenootschap Abacus.