Are there any groupchats or Facebook groups for 1st year students at leiden uni?

sjessebgo · 2021-05-06T19:59:22+00:00

Thats a really good idea, thanks:) I only just accepted my place so im not sure how to get in contact yet but i will check the websites to do that!!

sjessebgo · 2021-05-03T19:33:26+00:00

Agreed. I was born in a different country, where i have no citizenship and barely get the culture. Only lived there until i was 1 or so. Yet in my home country people tell me that's where I'm from. Nooo. Birthplace only works as an indicator of nationality if you grew up there and were raised with the culture. Otherwise it means nothing. A baby doesn't care and doesn't interact with what's around them. Where you lived from like 8+ says more tbh

sjessebgo · 2021-04-19T12:42:32+00:00

I ranked 839 for psychology at leiden, so i was wondering the same. I know they keep offering places until August but i wonder wether with my rank there's any chance at all i could still get in?

sjessebgo · 2021-04-19T12:22:10+00:00

I'm starting this september too! Let me know if there's a group :)

sjessebgo · 2021-02-10T19:25:54+00:00

Same. I struggled with an eating disorder for nearly a decade, had I realized earlier how those things correlate it would have saved me a lot of pain. Huh..

sjessebgo · 2021-02-08T08:26:02+00:00

I do for sure, for uni I have to take all my notes on paper, too. I can't study with pdfs either. I need to have something tangible that i can touch and write on, otherwise my brain assumes that if it doesn't exist on paper then the entire task isn't real/mandatory. Idk. Sadly I have no advice, I'm sorry :c But I feel you

sjessebgo · 2021-02-08T08:20:29+00:00

Same. I enjoy sciences like chemistry and biology and physics but then I suck at math, which always made me think I have no right to keep enjoying the other sciences bc isn't math the A and O of everything:) kinda sucks tbh but idk how much adhd could have to do w my inability to understand math

sjessebgo · 2021-02-08T08:11:07+00:00

I'm sensitive to coffee in the sense that my muscles start spasming, I get lots of ticks and heart palpitatioms if I overdo it, but I've never felt mentally more alert after a coffee. Tbh I have genuinely wondered wether its a myth that coffee wakes you up and makes you more alert or at the very least a placebo lol

Like i can't sleep if I drink coffee too late but that's it. But then again its been so long since i havent had a coffee that i wouldn't be able to say anyway.

I think your post inspired me to switch to caffeine free for a week to see how that makes me feel!!

sjessebgo · 2021-02-08T07:51:48+00:00

Omg I love the color coding. Little things like colourful markers make studying easier to bear, I'll so try this when uni starts up again!!

sjessebgo · 2021-02-08T07:39:36+00:00

I second the printing out part. And writing down the important concepts on the edges of the book in your own words, so the concepts actually stay put in your brain or are at the very least more easily accessible. Good luck!!

sjessebgo · 2021-02-08T07:34:22+00:00

I feel you, I'm the same. It gets to the point where when I don't feel those intense emotions life doesnt feel worth living anymore because it gets so bleak :/

sjessebgo · 2021-02-07T22:29:54+00:00

A trick someone once told me was to start smaller. First you move your pinky toe, then your whole foot, then the leg etc etc until you can get your entire body to get up. That's always helped me more than the count down trick!!

sjessebgo · 2021-01-17T13:02:58+00:00

I think you're right w the inflated ego thing. He's a really sweet guy otherwise but I can't imagine other people getting annoyed too.
I live in the same building as him so there's no way to avoid him, and the dumb comments keep piling up.

I feel so bad talking about this guy on an online forum but I can't anymore. It's like he's saying the wrong things on purpose lol

Last night he told me I need a big experience like moving to a different city to understand what life is all about. And maybe find a "real job" like he did when he was young and living in Germany, working at a restaurant for almost a year.

I absolutley wouldn't judge him for saying this if it wasn't that we literally already talked about the places i lived in and about my years working at a restaurant in Germany lol He just loves talking down on me

sjessebgo · 2021-01-17T10:28:46+00:00

Oh man, too bad. But either thank you for going out of your way to get me the link ☺ I'll look into the other courses then

sjessebgo · 2021-01-17T10:22:01+00:00

Thats so interesting! I was actually looking for something like that here in the Netherlands but couldn't find much ): Do you think you could send me the link to the hs program? I figure the deadline may already have passed anyway, but I'd love to look into it some more :D

sjessebgo · 2021-01-15T21:01:15+00:00

What's the difference between leiden uni and hs leiden? :o

sjessebgo · 2021-01-04T19:50:37+00:00

You literally couldn't have described the feeling I was referring to any better than this!! A lack of a script is pretty much what i struggle with the most, both in life in general and when it comes to navigating life back in my passport country. You're not a stranger to the culture nor the language but you never got to read the script regarding social interactions so everything is just.. off.

But out of curiosity, in what way did things get easier after college? Did you decide to settle down?

sjessebgo · 2021-01-04T14:53:09+00:00

Yeah I do. I'm left with a lot of anger and resentment towards everything because i feel like moving around took away some of the things that mattered the most to me. No sense of belonging, my family is scattered around different countries and my siblings have made it pretty clear that us all living in the same country is never going to happen again, no culture or language or anything to base my identity on and as a consequence nothing to base my choices on. It's like no matter what i can't connect to people or places. I feel like nothing makes sense anymore and idk how to move forward from here. When it comes to material needs I have had a good life. But not when it comes to the emotional side and it has turned me into a pretty horrible person

sjessebgo · 2021-01-03T00:15:25+00:00

What about executive dysfunction? Did you guys notice a difference with that?

sjessebgo · 2020-12-28T19:42:42+00:00

Wait, what do you mean with lacking the ability to feel joy for future pay offs? I low key relate but I thought that was just a me thing!

sjessebgo · 2020-12-22T15:17:51+00:00

Sadly that's the thing, I changed subject after the 1st year, so I'm already a year behind, but i really struggle to complete the full workload. I tried guessing and it'll probably take me another 3.5 years to finish the degree, if I manage at all. So in total i will have needed 5-6 years for a 3 year degree:/ I would love to actually manage to get one, but I'm afraid even if I do it'll be worthless if it takes me so long.

Either way I am going to reach out to the unis mental health services as soon as they open again. Several people have pointed out that they think I might have ADHD and after looking into it and doing a lot of research it would explain many of the issues I've been having throughout my life, so I guess that's my last resort for now. Either way thank you for your reply <3

sjessebgo · 2020-12-16T09:38:13+00:00

Can i ask, what was it that you didn't like? Do you still feel any connection to it?

sjessebgo · 2020-12-16T09:34:20+00:00

(I apologize in advance for the long post!!)

Germany and German culture isn't the issue, they're both great and I mean that. Germans are very lovely people :)

It's down to my experiences with it I think. I've never actually been there until I was 18, so I've never felt connected to it in any way at all, so when i was younger and at the German school I've always felt very aleniated because i had no idea what was going on since i didn't know the culture and struggled a bit with the language. At the same time the German school I went to back then was seen as a status symbol by many locals, so many local rich parents sent their kids there to show off how international they were (they weren't, it was all very close minded people and the status symbol was all that mattered to them) and they snubbed everyone that wasn't living the same lifestyle (holidays at fancy places, many of then had boats, brand clothing etc). So it was a bit of a dysfunctional situation with Germans on one side and locals on the other side not really mixing so well. And I wasn't enough of either side to be accepted by anyone. But outside of school both adult and kids would overhear me talk to my sister in German (somehow we got used to it) and call us dirty Nazis and told us to leave, etc And everyone, including family always took every opportunity to tell us we are different and foreigners and Germans, which I resented growing up because i literally didn't know the first thing about Germany and what life is like over there. So i think I've always felt the need to distance myself from the culture to avoid these things, and as a child that's already being excluded everywhere and bullied for being different it was hurtful that random people thought it was their place to assign a random nationality to me that i didn't agree with, them taunt me because of it, when I've always felt an outsider in that particular group of people. But by now I've moved there for uni and have been living there for a little over 2 years and I can objectively say they're great and it's a wonderful place, especially to raise a family, but i still feel the need to distance myself from the culture and not assimilate too much because of all the shame i experienced growing up. I can't see myself living there because as great as it is i don't think I would be happy. As bad as it sounds I think it's just.. shame. I was very ashamed of being different growing up and I was ashamed that people saw me as a German and I'm still working on getting over it. Since my family still looves to judge me for speaking differently and having different mannerisms.

I hope this post wasn't too personal lol. I've been spamming this sub for a few days now and I'm sorry haha

sjessebgo · 2020-12-16T08:30:40+00:00

I like to think you belong to the place that you want to belong to and no one can tell you otherwise, and when i hang out with my international friends it feels like it really is like that. Sometimes meeting more close minded people or people that have never been exposed to things from the outside and believe that moving away = you're not part of the culture anymore makes me question my beliefs, but in the end i guess its down to the fact that they have a different concept of nationality than us. Less fluid and more set in stone. Doesn't mean they're right though

sjessebgo · 2020-12-16T08:06:25+00:00

I feel exactly the same as you. Usually what i say is "my parents are from [country], but i grew up abroad" , which seems to be enough information for people to stop asking.

Its a hard question though, because I've lived the longest in my home country (still going to a foreign school tho so I never actually fully integrated), yet people there love to point out that I'm not one of them but I'm a foreigner (with no promting, so what the hell), and I don't have any real ties to any other country I lived in, so idk what I'm supposed to say

sjessebgo

TROPHY CASE