
9 Lessons I Learned From 3 Years In College
After 36 courses, 52 tests, 73 assignments and 195 ECTS I can proudly tell you I graduated cum laude with a bachelor degree in Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) from Eindhoven University Technology (TU/e). The wealth of knowledge that comes with this three year experience simply cannot be expressed in words. Besides the intellectual enrichment, it learned me countless life lessons of which I want to highlight 9 of them in this blog post.
Spoiler: the lessons learned aren’t unique, the stories behind them are.



1. Find Your Passion By Experimenting
First off, let me say that I know this whole “passion” thing is probably a bit overhyped among Millennials. Nevertheless you cannot deny it would be lovely if you can do what you love, love what you do and live off what you love. Fortunately, it has never been easier to make your passion your pay check: knowledge is democratised, business can be done from anywhere in the world and we are literally two clicks away from getting in touch with almost anyone.
Now, let’s take a step back for a moment and let me tell you how this whole story began three years ago. Back in the summer of 2014 just before I graduated from high school I was not really sure what I loved so much that I wanted to study it for at least the coming three years. IEM, Business Analytics, Mathematics or Econometrics & Operations Research? And what university should I go to? Eindhoven, Delft, Groningen or just do the same as 75% of my former classmates: stay close to home and study in Amsterdam. Therefore, it was no surprise that the study check for IEM (i.e. mandatory questionnaire to determine your motivations for the specific study) concluded that further study orientation was strongly recommended.


Yet, in the end, I decided to study IEM at the TU/e because it was the #1 ranked engineering school in The Netherlands. Also, an advantage of TU/e’s educational system is that it allows you to shape your study to a great extent (25% of the curriculum consists of electives). That way I could always adjust the program to my liking, I thought.
Only six months later — halfway through my freshman year (February 2015) — I sent an email to the study advisor to propose a customised study program: a double major in IEM and Computer Science (CS). The underlying thought here was that I wanted to both challenge myself and expand my technical skill set. Just over a year later (March 2016) I asked the exam committee to reverse this decision.
My point here is that, it’s very hard to find your passion if you lack the experiences. A simple tool that can help you discover it is experimentation.
In my case, running small experiments by taking multiple CS-electives learned me that I am very excited about web technologies, but not as much about theoretical computer science topics like discrete structures and algorithms. In the same way, participating and organising diverse events was not only a lot of fun but also helped me get to know myself better and thus discover my passion. Below I’ll share a couple of great memories (and experiments) with you.


















2. Job Searching & Writing Killer Emails
At the TU/e I have fulfilled a whole variety of part-time jobs being a: student assistant, course tutor, student mentor for freshmen students, technical support assistant for professors and engineering promoter at high schools. In a way, these jobs are also little experiments with as a recurring bonus: you get a monthly pay check. For that reason, people have often asked me how I got that many jobs. First off, let me emphasise that I am not on expert on this, but I think the following three factors helped me get the student assistantships at the TU/e:
- Looking In The Right Places: If you want a job you have to figure out where job postings are published. In some cases, professors will directly approach you through email once you meet their grading criteria. But you should also keep an eye out for updates on university recruitment sites (for TU/e: Euflex & WTB) and posters hanging around in the corridors of faculty building. Even better, you can show initiative by contacting internal departments yourself (for TU/e: TU/e list & ICTO). The advantage is that once you got your first university job you’ll be automatically subscribed to the Euflex mailing list.
- Getting Good Grades & Standing Out: For some positions you are only invited to apply once you have passed the course with a grade above a certain threshold. However, for most positions any student could essentially apply. It’s about putting in the effort to write an email that catches their attention. More about that later.
- A Bit Of Luck: Lastly, I should say that I got lucky a couple of times. For example, a professor found the course evaluation I wrote so helpful that he approached me a year later to offer me a student assistantship in which I could implement my suggestions for improvement myself.
Given this list, I believe there is most potential in writing a catchy email. I think the trick here is to get your foot in the door and since email is very often the first impression you’ll give the employer it’s a critical one. This is especially true if you have never seen the person before or expect something from the other one. Let me illustrate some of the writing tactics I deployed to arrange an interview with the CCO of StudyPortals (note, I had never seen the guy and he didn’t know me either). You can read my email below. After that, I highlight a few tactics I used in the email.

- Do Your Research: Although you may not know the person you send the email to, it’s very easy to gather information about both the company and person concerned these days thanks to the phenomenon called internet. Some handy sources: the company site (blog & team page), social media accounts of the company, Google News and the person’s LinkedIn page. Using the gathered information you can write a more personal letter and show the receiver that you did your research upfront. Above email directly or indirectly refers to the following seven sources:
- Crunchbase (“due to the enormous funding round”)
- Relocation press release (“we read the news about your new office”)
- Opening by Queen Maxima press release (“personally opened by our Her Majesty Queen Maxima”),
- Financial Times (“ranked 557th in Financial Times top 1000 fastest growing companies”),
- Bertrand’s personal company page (“back in the old days”, “Apart from some bad Dutch humour”)
- Google Maps (“two blocks from my home”)
- Bertrand’s LinkedIn page (he studied Industrial Engineering at the TU/e as part of an exchange). - Social Proof: It may sound a bit silly, but if someone doesn’t know you it’s important to convince him that you are worth spending his time on. If other people have done business with you before it’s a sign that you are trustworthy. For that reason, I explicitly referred to the interview I had already arranged with Blendle’s Product Manager.
- Praise the Receiver/Company: Everyone likes to receive authentic compliments. So if you have found any impressive fact about the person or company as part of your research you should include it in your email. Always make sure it comes across as authentic, otherwise this tactic can backfire horribly.
- Right Tone of Voice: Even though he may be the Chief Commissioner Officer of StudyPortals I chose for an informal writing style, because I know he’s a young guy who probably likes to be addressed like we’re having a normal conversation. Please note, I strongly discourage you to use such writing style when reaching out to your professor. It’s about knowing your target audience and what communication style they prefer.
- Knowing Your Place: Whichever way you look at it, I am asking Bertrand for a favour. That is why I admitted that I cannot really offer him anything meaningful and by mentioning multiple dates I tried to be flexible. It shows you’re humble and respect his time.
Is it the perfect email? No, I think it should be shortened (executive managers often have a lack of time) and if you read carefully you can spot some typos here and there. Nevertheless, he responded positively as you can read below:

So you probably wonder: how effective is this strategy? For course assignments, internships and the honours track I have regularly reached out to companies during my bachelor. Using aforementioned tactics I managed to arrange meetings with among others representatives of: Blendle, VodafoneZiggo, Graphlr, Medapp, EersteWerkgever, GroupM, Blue Mango, Stadsverwarming Purmerend, StudyPortals, Natural Talent, TMC, Nubis and Itelligence Group. Of course, I am fully aware that external factors play an important role here. Still, your email message is very important in my opinion. So do your research, craft your killer email and increase your odds of success!
3. Everything Is Wrong Until Proven True
This lesson I learned the hard way: as a 18-year-old kid I thought I had a brilliant idea to import so-called LED Light Up Cases from China and sell them via a webshop to consumers in the Netherlands (both standard and custom designs). My assumption was that there would be a lot of demand for these fancy iPhone cases. After all, I found multiple YouTube product review videos with hundreds of thousands of views and many people commented where they could purchase these flashy cases. At the same time I could not find any Dutch webshop that sold these phone cases. I didn’t realise that the phone accessories market is extremely saturated which makes it very hard to be found online: I built an entire webshop (flashify.nl), but didn’t sell one single case on it. Although, I sold quite some cases to friends and family I had plenty of stock over. In the end, I sold these left-overs to a guy I found on Facebook and broke even. In other words, an invaluable lesson learned (“if you build it, they will (NOT!) come”) but definitely not the success I initially hoped for.






At the university and in entrepreneurship events I have heard the whole “Lean Startup” methodology a million times. Nevertheless, I have occasionally made the mistake of falling in love with my own idea without proper market validation. For example, a year ago I built a university course review platform (CourseLabs) for the Education Council because I found the current process of giving feedback to teachers inefficient and frustrating. However, my professors and the board of my study association weren’t really interested in it and preferred to receive an old-school pdf-file in their email inbox. In other words, I waisted many (and I mean many) development hours. So don’t make the stupid mistake I made. Before you write a single line of code extensively research whether people really want your product or not. Most likely they don’t. And please be honest with yourself because— I can assure you — you’re not always going to like the results. For example, in the Young Creators Facebook group I asked people what they thought of the name “GroupMolder”. Well, the following fact tells it all: 203 out of 247 (82%) votes were for “Mweh”..






4. Surround Yourself with Brilliant and Interesting People
To continue on forming groups, in university you are sometimes randomly assigned to a group and thus don’t have any say in the team composition. However, in many cases you can consciously choose the people you spend time with. That goes way beyond your university group work. Personally, I really enjoy to attend entrepreneurship & tech events. Not necessarily because of the talks the speakers give (I don’t have to leave my student dorm to consume similar content), mainly because of the people that visit these events. To say the least, I don’t like the traditional idea of networking — talking to as many people as possible and getting as many business cards as possible — at all, because most of the time conversations remain on a very superficial level. On the other hand, if you go to these relatively “niche” type of events, the chance of meeting liked-minded people who share the same interests is significantly higher. Even more, I found that conversations are often more meaningful and interesting. In that sense, taking the initiative to go to such events — rather than restricting myself to the folks sitting in the same classroom — led to meeting very brilliant and interesting people.
As a side note, please note that “brilliant” is not 100% correlated to someone’s academical performance. Some of the most interesting people I have ever met aren’t exemplary students at all.






5. All Great Successes Are The Triumph Of Persistence
Of course, I am very grateful for the successes I had in recent years: being nominated for the KNAW thesis prize (2014), reaching the (semi-)finales of the TU/e Contest twice (2015 & 2016), receiving the 2nd prize at the TEC demo day (2016), being selected for TNW’s T500—a list of the five hundred most inspiring under 25s (2017) and most recently: graduating cum laude (2017). You would almost forget there is another side to the story: rejection & failure. Especially because very few people share these experiences publicly. For that reason, let me break the taboo by sharing some screenshots of rejection letters I received. After all, I think it is important to stay real and be reminded of that. It makes your successes even more special.






6. Preparation Is Key But Does Not Guarantee Success
In the autumn of 2016 I was looking for a company to do my Bachelor End Project (BEP) starting at the beginning of February. Using the same writing tactics I explained you earlier, I managed to get 3 offers from companies where I was more than welcome to do my BEP. Just before the Christmas holidays I chose for VodafoneZiggo in Eindhoven. Since the start of my bachelor in September 2014 this was my first opportunity as part of my academical curriculum to execute a real-life project and thus put my knowledge into practise. Hence, I was quite excited and that’s why I wrote a preparation document for my BEP covering topics like the project scope, requirements and expected deliverables. In other words, I was well-prepared and motivated to bring it to a good ending.


At that moment of time, the 2nd of January 2017, I would have never thought that I would file my resignation letter only 5 weeks after I started working on the project on February the 7th. In hindsight, I think it was the right decision. After all, my plan B was to conduct a study on the topic of Kickstarter crowdfunding success which was a very challenging but satisfying experience. In more concrete terms, writing the academical paper and especially figuring out all the technical details (web scraping, data preprocessing and machine learning) has learned me by far the most of any of the 36 bachelor courses I have taken in total.

“It’s better to have a dreadful end than an endless dread”
7. Spend Your Time Wisely
It’s a fact (and a cliche): we all have 24 hours in a day. And it’s fully up to you how you spend those 86,400 seconds every single day. I don’t have any crazy sleeping habits or others hacks but I am very picky how I spend my time. In fact, it’s the only option if you want to combine high academic ambitions, part-time jobs, sports and a social life. Let me share a couple of tactics I found helpful:


- Figure Out Your Own Learning Style = As a student mentor this was one of the most important lessons I told my twelve “mentor kids”. I don’t believe there is an ultimate how-to-study-guide that works for everyone. However, I think many students could study more efficiently. For example, I am a very slow reader who don’t observe information properly by reading. That’s why I have never read a single study book in my bachelor (in fact, I didn’t buy any books after the first semester). On the other hand, I make very detailed notes by watching video lectures. Just to clarify, I don’t say: don’t read any study books. It might work perfectly for you, but for me it does not.
- Limit Travel Time = In my case this was a very obvious one: daily travel time from my parents’ home to the TU/e and back would amount to at least 5 hours every day (2.5–2.75 hours one-way). You might think: you can study in public transport so travelling is not really a waste of time, is it? Well, I tried very hard but seriously I cannot. WiFi in the busses and trains is very slow, I am easily distracted by others, during rush hours trains are often so crowded that you cannot even sit and due to transfers on my way home I cannot work for long continuous periods of time. Then another common myth: doing the groceries and other household chores (e.g. cooking, the dishes) takes a lot of time. It simply does not: for me it is between 3 and 5 hours each week. And in case you wondered, my student room is not a mess. If you don’t believe me, I happily invite you to come over and check it out yourself..
Aside from saving travelling time, living away from home makes you way more flexible. At the start of my freshman year I didn’t have a student room yet. Therefore, I only went to the university 2–3 times a week which made it very difficult to schedule meetings for group and committee work. I am pretty sure others found this annoying which bothered me too. Further, some part-time jobs required me to work irregular and unexpected hours which is only possible if you live nearby Eindhoven and are independent of public transport. In short, for those reasons I would highly recommend any student to move out in order to save travel time and enjoy their study time to the fullest.



- No Pointless Meetings = Once you go to the university you suddenly have to do a lot of group assignments which requires good communication. Though, some people think this means you should have group meetings 2 or even 3 times a week. As a result, I have attended many useless group meetings without any clear upfront goals. It can really be a waste of your time, especially for those who specially come to the university from their parents’ home for a single meeting. That’s why I try to follow the motto: nothing to discuss = no meeting. Again, this does not mean that you shouldn’t have any meetings at all. It seems logical, but it turns out for some people it is not.
8. Finding Out What You Are Good At (And What Not)
Feedback from others can be a great source to improve your self-awareness. Sometimes you get it without even asking for it. For example, during the Engineering Design course my tutor and peers told me that I tend to be a bit stubborn. Truth be told, it’s not always easy to hear such feedback and you may not want to think about it ever again. However, I think honest and authentic qualitative feedback is like gold and should be treated like such. After all, in the past three years I may have received 225 quantitative grades, but less than 15 of them are accompanied by personal feedback.
Both positive and negative textual feedback I store in a single folder, so that it doesn’t ever get lost. In addition, I have an Evernote notebook that contains notes of more informal feedback sessions. A few of the things you find in there:
“Although Roy is not the loudest speaker, he proactively searches for a lot of things by himself without asking.”
“Our advice is to see if you can further deepen in one of the 3 directions (design/analytics/development) so that you are a great asset for at least one of them.”
“He always knows what he is talking about and his analyses are very elaborate.”
9. Your Dreams Are Only Your Dreams Until You Write Them Down
As part of the honours program in my sophomore year I was expected to write a Personal Development Plan (PDP). This is a 5–10 page document that describes your short- and long-term ambitions, your challenges, your competence development and a description of the honours project you are going to work on as a team. Throughout the year the PDP would be used for reflection purposes and at the end of the academic year it would serve as input for the final assessment. I can assure you that — like many other 2nd-year-engineering students — I was rather skeptical about the whole idea of writing down your dreams. However, looking back at it, I found it quite helpful. Having a PDP is great, though what I found most powerful is the process of sharing it with someone else who regularly confronts you with it. It made me feel accountable, because I wanted to show progress and didn’t want to disappoint my mentor. So my lesson learned here is that dreaming big is good, but sharing your big dreams with someone else is even better.
Now, let’s put my money where my mouth is by sharing my long-term (<10 years) career ambition with you:
By 2025 I have co-founded or joined a technology based start-up at the intersection of education and data science. The company can be characterised as a rocket ship: it shows signs of high-growth and has the potential to revolutionise education worldwide for people of all ages. Moreover, it solves a real and meaningful problem (1) by offering a solution that is loved by students, teachers and educational institutions (2) and it has attracted the most brilliant and inspiring people on earth to work there (3). My role as a product manager is to test product hypotheses, prioritise feature development, optimise key metrics to foster growth, dictate the product vision and connect all team members by speaking everyone’s language. The ability to grow and learn from others are very important to me. On the flip side, I want my colleagues to consider me as trustworthy, action driven, thoughtful, high-performing and open-minded with a personal touch.
For now, I say goodbye to this chapter of my life. Already within a few weeks the next chapter begins at the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS). I am looking forward to studying the sexiest profession of the 21st century, and keep moving closer to my long-term ambition. Though remember, there are many roads that lead to Rome..
Roy.

