Meet the Board!

On the 31st of Augustus 2020, the 91st board took the scepter of the 90th board of E.T.S.V. Scintilla. In this article they will introduce themselves and tell you all about their history and their goals this year. You get to know their motivation for doing a board year and their hobbies (besides being active in Scintilla committees). Of course they included some random fun-facts about themselves too! Their stories are accompanied with several pictures from their photoshoot.

Wouter Nijenhuis, President and Administrator

Hey there awesome reader,

Most of you hopefully already know me, maybe already for a few years or maybe you only just read the presidential note. Either way I hope you get to know me (a bit better) by reading this introductory piece. My name is Wouter Nijenhuis and I am the new president of our lovely association. Besides that, I am also responsible for the finances of the STORES as Administrator. This means you will see me a lot in Educafe to guide the board at the Scintilla room or I will be at our little shop to fix some component stock. You can always shoot me with a question if you see me around!

So, to understand how I ever became a board member we must start all the way at the beginning in the city of Haarlem where I was born. I lived there with my sister and parents but sadly they did not like that the beach was just a bike ride away, so we quickly moved to Apeldoorn where I spent the rest of my childhood. Here I finished my primary and secondary school and without much trouble also went trough high school. Besides school I was very fond of Judo and Jiujitsu and even competed in matches for a couple of years.

After living for almost 15 years in Apeldoorn and after half a year of going to the UT by train I decided it was enough and went living in Enschede. This gave me the opportunity to become more of an active member at Scintilla. At the second committee market in my first year I chose to not take it slow and joined the SHOCK, SECS and Scrapheap committee! This was just a slippery slope because after organizing an epic Scrapheap weekend and some hobby evenings with the SHOCK I decided to also join the MasterCLASS, STORES and SKIC. These committees guided me in becoming very fond of Scintilla. I was sad to miss Scintilla when I did a minor Biology in Utrecht in my third year. Therefore, I was often back in Enschede for activities or just using the SK as a room for self-study. But I still longed for more, so now I spent my full days at Scintilla as a board member.

Besides doing a board year I am also occupied with some other stuff. I am very fond of sailing so some weekends I go to Harderwijk to take my VAGO for a spin. During the last summer break, I even got my certificate as a sailing instructor and now I teach kids how to gain incredible speeds on water. When I finally have time to relax, I like to listen to music or watch an ‘intellectual stimulating’ movie. But if I am really tired some cheesy romcom or dumb action movie also suffices as some relaxation material.

Oh, I almost forgot, I really like to know random facts, like that goats are not able to cry. So, if you have some do not hesitate to tell them to me! I am looking forward to meeting all of you in person at one of Scintillas activities or just around the Scintilla Room. Stay safe and see you soon!

Groetjes,

Wouter

Mathijn Becker, Secretary and Vice-President

Moi!

My name is Mathijn, and I am the Secretary and Vice-President for the 91st board of E.T.S.V. Scintilla! As a secretary, I hope to maintain all the information which needs to be maintained, and ensure swift and effective communication between the board and other parties. Aside from that, I like to pick up tasks outside of my function-specific ones, like creating and ordering the board clothing.

But I am not just a board member, I am also a human being! Woah! As a human, I do things I enjoy in my free time. At the moment, that mostly consists of listening to artists such as Aries, Bring Me The Horizon, Maduck, Paramore, Roderick Porter, and Yorushika. Aside from that, I try to play a little bass guitar every day. Before, when I had more free time, I used to play a lot of Rocket League. So much so, that I reached the highest rank in the game (top 0.5% of players), which cost me 1900 hours to achieve so I am sad and proud at the same time. Next to that, I enjoy driving cars a lot, but as a broke student the only chances I get to drive are when I am at my parent’s place. Instead, I play some Assetto Corsa every now and then. AC is a racing simulator, but I only ever slide sideways (a motion known as drifting) on street roads. Perhaps it is for the better that I don’t own a vehicle…

Just like any other human, I was born. In my case, this happened to be in Stadskanaal, a city in the province of Groningen, east of Drenthe. Fun fact about Stadskanaal, when you enter the city there’s a sign saying, “Welcome in #Stakka!” which I personally find hilarious. After two years of living in #stakka, my parents, my little sister and I moved west, into Drenthe. The rest of my youth was spent in Assen. In the final year of my elementary school I was told that I was either a HAVO or VWO student, depending on whether I would actually start putting in effort for school. Jokes on them however, I made it to university without putting in effort! In university, the joke was on me though, as I never learned to put in effort to get passing grades. After one and a half year of studying I was pretty close to running myself into the ground, so I decided to take a break from studying.

Luckily, I am feeling a lot better again now, but I still feel like continuing my break from studying. I hope to find out what I want to do for a job, or maybe at the least figure out what I want to do for my masters during this board year. Furthermore, I had a great time as committee member of EEMCS-trip, Scrapheap, EE-sports and de Borrel, so I thought a board year was great for this, as now I can experience what it is to not be busy with education during the day and give back to the association where I had many good times.

I hope that we all can have a great year together, both in productivity and in “gezelligheid”, a Dutch word which is surprisingly hard to translate into English. I would describe it as follows: when it is “gezellig” there is a fun atmosphere, and people are having a good time, so any Scintilla borrel really. So if you want to experience true “gezelligheid,” come join me and your other fellow Scintilla members at the next drink!

With “gezellige” greetings,

Mathijn Becker

Jasper Vinkenvleugel, Treasurer

Dear Vonk reader,

It is once again time for a new year of studying at the University of Twente. Unfortunately, this year we exchanged the usual Kick-In-related illnesses with a global pandemic, so I hope you all started the year well and in good health. Luckily we can be on campus a bit more than last year, but it is still a weird beginning. Everything can always be better and hopefully it will be soon.

My name is Jasper Vinkenvleugel, and I am the new treasurer of E.T.S.V. Scintilla. This is my fourth year at the university, just like my fellow board members. I live in the city of Enschede, but originally I am from Dinxperlo, a small place that is sometimes referred to as Germany. Which it is certainly not, but I am going to mention that I receive a ‘Welcome to Germany!’ text every time I go to the supermarket.

When I started studying in Twente back in 2017, I joined a new do-group called Lecarud, named after a very famous French scientist or something else depending on who you are talking to. Through the Kick-In camp I learned to know E.T.S.V. Scintilla, and I immediately knew that I wanted to join a committee. At the committee market I signed up for the Parents Day committee (which I will be the contact person for this year, full circle!), and the rest is history. In the last years I have been an active member at SCALA, SKIC 2019, the embroidery committee and serveral others. In addition to my activism at Scintilla, I am the coordinator of the bachelor open days for Electrical Engineering.

In my second year at SCALA I became the treasurer of the committee. While most committee treasurers mostly just make financial reports of activities, the treasurer of SCALA also does work in our financial administration software, Multivers. I spent a year learning how to use Multivers, and in the end I found out that it is actually very fun and that is why I decided that I wanted to become the treasurer of the association.

Together with the other members that were interested in a board position, we had to come up with a seperation of tasks. This proved to be quite a job, but one thing was clear from the start: my position of treasurer was undisputed. This lead to the inevitable nickname of ‘de stabiele steen’, Dutch for ’the stable rock’.

Other things you have to know about me are my love of Formula 1 and my urge to use Linux in every situation possible. Want to know how I run Multivers, which is Windows-only software, on my virtual machine at home which I connect to using SPICE over QEMU+SSH over WireGuard?

I am very much looking forward to seeing all of you on campus again later this year, to make this board year the most fun experience possible. For the time being, go grab a coffee at the service desk in the Zilverling and stay safe!

See you soon,

Jasper

Herjan Barkman, Commissioner of External Affairs

Heya dear reader,

You may know me from the “a day in my life” video on the utwente website for electrical engineering or from one of the many activities organized by Scintilla. My name is Herjan Barkman and I am the commissioner of external affairs of 91st board of E.T.S.V. Scintilla. I will tell you later what that means, because first you may want to know who I am and how I got here.

I grew up in a lovely place called Dedemsvaart. Here I developed my hobby’s as painting, acting, playing music instruments and doing sports. I also did a lot of extra stuff next to my high school education including the representative advisory council (medezeggenschapsraad) and going to MUN’s (model united nations). I never was very good in mathematics, but physics and informatica were one of my favorite classes. Which is the main reason I ended up studying Electrical Engineering.

In my first year, I was directly pretty active with the association. I joined my first committees Sjaarcie, LEX and STUDI. Especially the LEX was something I liked a lot. After talking with the 88th board about their board year. I aspired to become board myself as well. Not only did I want to become board, but also the specific function of commissioner of external affairs was something which looked very cool to me.

After my first year I joined even more committees and I can safely say that there were not many activities where you couldn’t find me. I grew in functions within the LEX becoming first secretary and afterwards chairman. The next logical step for me was to become external affairs. And here I am doing exactly what I hoped I would do back in my first year.

So what does it mean to be the external affairs? The main goal is to give our members some perspective in their career orientation. Finding interesting companies for you and let them give lunch lectures or organizing excursions to cool companies. Internships and workshops given by companies are also one of the things you have to think about. For this I need to maintain the cooperation with our partners and keep the cooperation healthy. I’m also in a never ending quest to find more and new companies who are interesting for electrical engineers.

A good thing with having partners is that they give sponsor money in return. This can mean free lunch, free drinks or even free or special cool activities. So if you ever find a jacuzzi or a band at an event. It is probable sponsored by one of our nice partners.

So now you know who I am and what I do. I hope that I can get to know you too. So come to the service desk or Scintilla room once in a while and have chat with us. You can also find us at most of the activities Scintilla organizes.

Hope to meet you soon!

Herjan

Julia Kaptein, Commissioner of Internal Affairs

Hi everyone, my name is Julia Kaptein and I am the Internal Affairs for the 91st board of Scintilla. I just finished my bachelors and decided to spend a year as a full-time board member. First, I will tell you a bit more about myself. As I said before my name is Julia Kaptein, and I am 21 years old. I am from Barneveld but have been living in a student house in Enschede for three years now. When I am not at scintilla I like hanging out with friends and watching Netflix or going out for some drinks. Every once I while I also like to work out to compensate a little bit for the student lifestyle. I became a member of the Faculty council this year as well. There I have a chance to participate in discussions about decisions that affect the EEMCS faculty. In short I really enjoy my student life here.

This year I finished my bachelor and I decided I wanted to learn something outside the scoop of electrical engineering before I will start my masters. That why I decided to do a board year at Scintilla. This was a logical choice for me since I have been enjoying my life at scintilla a lot. I have been part of various committees where I had the pleasure to organize and bartend numerous activities. Of course, I also enjoyed being at activities that I did not organize nor bartend.

The function of Internal Affairs was not the function that had my preference within the board. Nevertheless after giving it some thought I decided that I would still take this function since I can still learn a lot in this function and in general from being a board member. Additionally, I like that there is a big social aspect to the function of Internal Affairs.

During the candidate board period it became clear that this board year would be different from ‘standard’ board years because of the COVID-19 situation. Which means there won’t be a script we can follow. This, however, gives me a chance to learn more about adapting and gives a lot of room to improvise. Especially in the function of Internal Affairs thinking out of the box will be required this year to make sure members still have a great year at scintilla. Therefore I will aim at making sure that there are enough activities organized by committees within the set regulations.

I hope to see all of you soon during one of the upcoming activities.

Cheers!

Julia

Marleen van Dijk, Commissioner of Educational Affairs

Hello everyone!

Some of you might already know me as I’ve been active at Scintilla for the past three years. My name is Marleen and this year I will be commissioner of educational affairs for Scintilla.

22 years ago I was born in Tiel, a small city in the Betuwe, which is an area famous for its amount of fruit. You might know our city’s mascotte ‘Flipje’, a guy covered in fruit, but we also have a very nice free festival called ‘Appelpop’ which I’ve been visiting since I was three years old. I’ve always made sure to visit my favourite artitsts there. Fun fact; when I was 5 years old my favourite artist was Within Temptation, maybe not because I liked her music that much, but I really liked her dress. Later on, Caro Emerald became my favorite artist. Last year, even Scintilla’s favourite Christmas artist ‘Merol’ performed at this festival. She managed to bring the real Christmas feeling to September.

After high school I decided to study linguistics in a beautiful city next to the Waal, Nijmegen. I learned very interesting things about languages, but after half a year of studying linguistics I discovered it was not what I wanted. I still am very interested in languages, but I wanted to do something more mathematical and challenging. I ended up choosing electrical engineering, which is quite a switch, but I’m still happy I made this choice. After visiting all open days of different technical universities in the Netherlands, I decided I felt most at home in Twente. At the moment I live here on campus, together with my 11 housemates. I enjoy the nature around here which is why I often go for a walk or for a run through the beautiful forest which is close to campus.

In the beginning of the academic year I and other kiddos were encouraged to visit the committee market. As I was already interested in improving educational quality back then, the first committee I decided to join was the educational committee StOEL, later renamed to STUDI. As a secretary I learned to understand the educational structures within the university and how to evaluate the quality of education. After that I also decided to join EE-sports, the sports committee. I enjoy sports, especially trying out new sports I don’t know yet. At EE sports I learned how to organize activities whilst having a lot of fun. I also joined LEX, which organizes lunch lectures given by companies. Here I learned to contact companies and got to know lots of different of career possibilities. I decided to become a board member to learn even more about improving education and organizing activities, but also to have a lot of fun.

Maybe you haven’t seen me around a lot last year. This is because I did my minor in Norway, a beautiful country with beautiful nature. Even though I sometimes missed the Dutch ‘gezelligheid’ (and cheap beers) we had at Scintilla, I met a lot of nice people and learned about their home country and culture. I am happy I went there and I gained lots of experiences like jumping into an ice cold lake, but you can read all about that in another Vonk article.

I am looking forward to my board year and the fun activities we will do together! Also, if you have any questions or problems regarding Scintilla or your study don’t hesitate to walk by the Scintilla room or send a message.

See you soon!

Marleen van Dijk