Trine Blogs – Why I joined a student committee

In which we learn that kids are much brighter than we think (except when it comes to discerning the difference between Nelson Mandela and Morgan Freeman); that Polish people drink vodka to keep warm because it’s so cold there (and here, leading to lack of sleep and questionable breath before school presentations); that our Dutch committee president is easily mistaken for a Spanish student from Madrid (and will not correct you if you assume as such); that German teachers are more than willing to talk about their hazy, drunken youth in a manner that shocks the students (this student-teacher relationship will never be the same); that 16 year old students are impossible to quieten down when you accidentally imply that you enjoy, eh, intimate relations with your boyfriend on the kitchen table; and that it is possible we can never return to this school due to aforementioned lessons.

If I could somehow explain to you the events of this past Wednesday, I would. But I am at a loss for words. The only one I can come up with is: fun.

I joined a student committee a while back to do some fun voluntary work. I was especially drawn to a high school project, in which two international students (Sabina and Adryana from Poland this time) spend a day at the bilingual high school in Tilburg presenting about their home country. I just have to make sure that everything runs smoothly; doesn’t sound so hard, right? I mean, getting up at 6.30 so we could all be there at 8.00 (at least, if our president hadn’t overslept, leaving the rest of us to figure out how on earth to find the school) isn’t all that bad. But who could imagine the amount of mischief you can up to, even though it’s been at least half a decade since we all left high school?

Honestly, I didn’t think it would be as much fun as it turned out to be. I mean, sitting in a corner with a notepad from 8 to 15; not really intellectually challenging, right? Wrong. These kids asked more questions than we could keep up with. They rattled off more classical pianists in 10 seconds than I would be able to Google in 10 minutes*. They were impossible to fool when confronted with two almost identical photos of Dutch and Polish buildings and beaches; they know what’s Dutch (even if, in one case, the reasoning was that “that picture has a car, so it must be Dutch”. Erm?). These kids are so bright. One was almost bright enough to talk his way out of my reprimand when he used the F-word, but his argument faltered when he reached “all the Dutch people are doing it” and wasn’t able to respond to my “but it’s not a school word, hm?”.

But they weren’t smart enough to figure out that our committee president was not, in fact, Spanish. Even when they made him read a Dutch sentence and marvelled at his pronunciation. Even when they noticed he understood “some” Dutch. Even when the rest of us were shoving our fists into our mouths, watching with horrible fascination, trying not to laugh. Smartypants children: 107, us “adults”: 1. Score**.

Do join a student committee. There are so many fun things you can do, both at university and all over town. It’s a great way to get out of bed in the morning. You meet a lot of nice, interesting, smart, funny people. You get to do things you never imagined you’d do. You get to do a day’s honest work for the benefit of someone else. What are you waiting for?

10 points if you can guess which one of us made the kitchen table blunder. Even the teacher laughed. It was embarrassing, yo.

(* Did you know Chopin was Polish? I didn’t.

** I wonder what they’ll do if they ever find out that our president is as Dutch as they come. I hope they let us come back.)

Trine Larsen (23) from Denmark studies Management of Cultural Diversity at Tilburg University and blogs for Univers.