First 50 Days: Dutch bureaucracy

The weirdest thing happened to me the other day. I was told about Dutch bureaucracy and how things can get really complicated, but honestly I thought that was pure exaggeration. I mean, I’m Greek! Bureaucracy is as natural as oxygen for us!

Anyway, since I had some time to spare, I decided to stop by the Student Desk and ask for a Student Certificate.  By the way, I still can’t get the logic hidden behind the way numbers show up on the waiting board. Is it like waiting to catch the lottery? Because they seem to lack coherence. 5024, 121, 3067, and so on. Anyway, I was lucky number 1041 and one hour later, I hit the jack- pot!

So I go and ask for the certificate but the clerk seems a bit hesitant as she looks on her screen. The dialogue goes like this:

– Umm… I am sorry but this is not possible. You still haven’t sent us your Dutch language certificate and therefore you cannot receive any other certificate until you do so.

– Oh, you mean that e-mail I received yesterday about the language certificate. Well, I ignored it because I was told from other international students that also received it, that it was wrong.

And apparently it was, since I am an international student, studying in an English taught program, and even if I were fluent in Dutch, I wouldn’t need to prove it.

The clerk agrees with the above observation and gets on the phone with a colleague to see what they can do.

Turns out that I need to get an exemption from Dutch (!), typically, so that I can be unlocked on the system and go to the Student Desk twice more, once to ask (again) for the student certificate and once to receive it.

On the bright side, I know what to do during my free time the following week. Hang out at the Student Desk!

[Katerina Petropoulou (25) studies Business Communication and Digital Media at Tilburg University and writes the First 50 Days blog for Univers.]

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