The 90th board of Scintilla

On the 3rd of September 2019, the 89th board handed over the scepter to the 90th board of E.T.S.V. Scintilla. We have asked them to introduce themselves by writing something about their history. Get to know the new board members a little better by reading the stories in this article and learn what is driving them and what will keep them busy the coming year.

Goedemorgen Zonnestraaltjes, Goodmorning Sunshines,

You might already know me for a few years, maybe for a few weeks or you might get to know me by reading this text. In this short piece I will explain who I am and what I will be doing this year. My name is Lars Essenstam and will be the president of our lovely association for this year. As president, I am the face of the association. This means you will see me a lot on activities or hanging around in the Scintilla room, or just walking around somewhere on the UT. I am always open for a short (if I am busy) talk or a long talk.

Now you might be wondering, how do you in up in this position. Well, for me it started around 3 years ago, when I started studying Electrical Engineering. Back then I was still a cute first year student, quite naive and not really sure what I wanted to do. I was planning to join some kind of sports association, but due to a football injury in my first year that was not possible anymore. One day my do-group parent dragged me to the committee market. It was quite easy to convince me to go there because I am a big fan of lunch, especially free lunch. While there, I talked to some kind people and I decided to join the first-years committee.

During, the rest of my first year I had lots of fun with this committee. We often got together at evening to ‘evaluate’ activities, or ‘brainstorm’ about new ones, but of course this was just an excuse to have fun. In my second year I joined many more Scintilla committees, such as the Kick-in committee. During there I learned organising more serious activities and got more responsible because of it. The rest of the year I also joined some other activities, SCALA, Scintilla’s committee for all likeable activities, and de Borrel, the bartender’s guild. Due to this I got a lot closer to the association and got to know a lot more people. I more and more started to find myself at home at Scintilla, and sometimes spend a whole day sitting in the Scintilla Room. In my third year I decided to become a member of de Borrel Board, which meant quite some responsibility.

When the option came to become a board member, I did not have to think twice. I knew for sure that as a board member I would get to know many new people, learn new skills, organize even more activities and, most importantly, have an awesome year. After a long period of being a candidate board member, I can now finally proudly say I am a board member. Together with the 4 other board members, we run around, work every day, and drink ridiculous amounts of coffee. But that’s my history (and future) with Scintilla, now a little more about the rest of my life:

I was born in Hoenderloo, a small village in the middle of a forest in Gelderland. I had lived there for 18 years when I moved to Enschede when I started studying there. I live in quite a small house together with 2 other students and have lived there for my whole student time. I do not sport much; however, I do plenty of things to keep myself busy. Such as hanging out with friends, gaming and going to Scintilla activities. I hope to meet all of you this year!

Lars

G’day dear Scintillian,

Most of you will hopefully know me already or have seen me walking around over the past three years. My name is Maarten and a little more than 21 years ago I was born in the city of Groningen, all the way up North in the Netherlands. Although my parents come from small towns in Friesland and Noord-Brabant, I feel strongly connected to my city of birth.

In September 2016 I started my studies here at the University of Twente. While I was completing my Bachelor, I decided to sign up for a board year at Scintilla and now I am writing this article! This academic year I fulfil the function of secretary of the association. You can always find me in the Scintilla room, reading and writing e-mail after e-mail. Whenever I am not in a meeting or working on the minutes of the General Member Meetings (GMMs), I have the honour to manage and maintain our snack list, SWIPED!

Before I moved to Enschede, I went to primary and high school in Groningen. Fun fact: my high school was called Maartenscollege, certainly a coincidence! Besides my academic career, I also did various other stuff. Many would not expect, but I played the recorder (no not the electronic device I use at GMMs, but the wooden flute one) and the piano for a few years. I spent all my sporting life on competitive swimming, I did this for approximately twelve years. Remarkable, during the last four years, the trainings started at 5:45 am. Doing this for a couple of years made me a real early riser, this explains why I am always present early in the Scintilla room.

Before I became a member of the 90th board of Scintilla, I have been active in various committees. In my freshman year I joined the Scrapheap Challenge committee. Apart from organising some general stuff for the weekend activity, our main job was to gather as much junk as possible. A very accessible committee for freshmen. I also have been chairman of the activity committee SCALA, think of the Christmas dinner and the Summer Barbecue, and STUDI. During my time in STUDI I enjoyed discussing relevant and lingering educational issues with many students and staff from the programme. Moreover, I am a proud member of Censores Cantus Scintillae, the committee which upholds the quality of our wonderful cantus. Furthermore, I am in my second term of the EEMCS Faculty Council. During our meetings with the faculty board we provide advise and consent on serious matters, such as but not limited to the Quality Agreements (Dutch: WSV-gelden), housing, and human resource of the faculty.

Once you have been an active member of Scintilla for some years, you develop some strange habits and other weird customs. Like a real Electrical Engineer, I also named my soldering iron: Patricia. As an enthusiast of SWIPED I have also developed my favourite snack, the Nacho Cheese flavoured Doritos. When the working day is over and I am not in the drinking room, I usually watch various movies and series. I am a great fan of Bond movies, especially the older ones with Sean Connery. Furthermore, I am always in for a good discussion ranging endless subjects.

I hope to see you around at the Scintilla room or at our activities!

Kind regards,
Maarten

Hello awesome Vonk reader,

A new academic year has started and for a lot of you that means a new year full of lectures, tests, lab sessions but also a lot of new opportunities and fun activities. For me this is only half true since I am part of the 90th board of Scintilla. This means a lot of opportunities and fun activities and hopefully a really awesome year without any education obligations.

My name is Jessie Huiden and my function in the board is treasurer. This means that I will be handling all money related cases and issues, which in case of Scintilla is a lot of money. At least compared to the money I have as a student. Of course I will not only be busy with treasurer work. A big part of being a board means executing our policy plan and other general board tasks which for sure are things I will be doing this year.

Being a treasurer means doing a lot of administration on the computer which requires a lot of sitting. I therefore really like being a bit more active in the evening. Around three times a week a play volleyball at the student volleyball association Harambee. A volleyball training and game usually consist of two parts: actually performing the sport and what my fellow board members call ‘training’. The main goal of this ‘training’ is to stay hydrated, be social (ieuw) until it is time to escalate right into the Vestingbar. Just like a real work-out this training also sometimes results in some kind of muscle pain, usually a headache. Unfortunately this kind of muscle pain is not that healthy and means that you escalated a bit too much. It however does also most of the time mean that you had a really nice and fun evening. Luckily I actually do some physical exercise beforehand so that might compensate a bit for the second part of the training. At least I hope.

Of course the Thursday evenings are reserved for the Scintilla activities. I really enjoy a nice BBQ, theme drink or any other activity together with other Scintilla members. Since I also really like to see other people enjoying an activity I decided to join a committee during my first year at the university, almost three years ago. It all began with the parentsday committee in 2016. After that I joined more committees such as the Borrel, EE-Sports and SKIC leading up to becoming a board member of Scintilla. Each of these committees were really fun to be part of and ideal stepping stones in becoming board member.

A very nice thing about being an active Scintilla member is the amount of nice people you meet and get to know. The only thing you have to do for a fun conversation is to pass by the Scintilla room and, excluding the early mornings, there are always a few people who are procrastinating their work (just like me writing this piece) and thus are in dire need of some distraction. This makes the scintilla room a fun place to be however also not to most efficient work space.

This concludes my piece of the Vonk. If you have any questions about me, the association, the education or any other things feel free to walk past the Scintilla room and I will try to answer them or help to find an answer. For now have fun reading this Vonk and I hope to see you anytime soon.

Obviously, you guys are expecting another bunch of cliche outings in this piece of the Vonk. Probably the hardest part about wrilting this is not to be cliche and write something inspiring, something to look back on after this year and be proud of, and with good reason. Dark times are coming, as this is the last analogue Vonk, and we are the last board to write something in Scintilla’s Periodical in its current form. Enlightening times, however, are already here as the Vonk will continue on-line! Kindly we are waiting to see this article there as well!

One may have already looked on the website to discover what my functions will be within the 90th board of E.T.S.V. Scintilla. New business relations, maintenance of business relations and providing members with the appropriate information to start their careers. It’s only a handful of the tasks that touch my first function, Commissioner of External Affairs. Nowadays there is a vast jungle called the “Labour Market”. Going there means being pulled towards open vacancies of companies that would like to hire you, by 10 companies at the same time. In this vast jungle, the external affairs and the LEX will help guide everyone towards a nice company!

Now, you may know that this is not my only function. Only the function of External Affairs did not seem like a large-enough mountain to climb. Pursuing another, unknown, discipline was something that seemed like the real challenge. So, after working many Stores-shifts the last few years, I was inspired to become Stores Administrator for the 90th board of Scintilla! Coming from a salesman and going to finances is quite a big step. Incidentally, this is also my first time as treasurer of any part of Scintilla, which makes it even more of a challenge. Now, after being trained well by Sebastian, I will face this challenge head on, and I’m confident that we’ll have another great year with the Stores!

Toward the end of this little piece of text, I would like to let you in on a little secret. It’s no secret that board-members like to toast during drinks or other gatherings. Ladies and Gentlemen (dames en heren…) are the three words that will attent all Scintilla members that something is about to happen. Logically, this love for our association and her toast made me decide to also become Vice-President of Scintilla.

All in all, I’m really excited to face this board year head on, and, together with my fellow board members, keep this association the best and most fun one on the University!

Now, because Lars Essenstam is also on this page, I may not end with a toast, but I left a little surprise for you all in the paragraphs above, can you figure it out?… (Don’t tell the president…)

Kind Regards,

Lars Holm

Hello dear Vonk reader, My name is Sjoerd. Obviously, I am an electrical engineering student that has decided to spend a year on doing stuff that have a lot less to do with electrical engineering. To be a bit more specific, I will be functioning as a member of the board of Scintilla, as both internal affairs and educational affairs. Briefly, I will tell something about me and why I choose to take this path.

As stated above, my name is Sjoerd, I am 20 years old writing this, possibly 21 when you are reading this. My hometown has been Zutphen for the most of my life. Of course as soon as I started studying, I moved out to Enschede to realize my student life. Now for over 2 years I have been living here and am more than enjoying it.

This year I have started my 3rd year of being a student, which to many people closely associated to Scintilla sounds like just the start of studying, however, to me it sounds like more than two year have flown by like it was nothing. So, I thought, why not stick another year somewhere in between those (hopefully) 5 years. And then I thought, what will in do in such a year? This was for me a question easily answered, in the past two years I have had so many great time being present at Scintilla that for me a board year sounded like a natural choice. Then the final question is of course, does one want a bachelor before going into a board year? Well, no, of course you don’t. So being enthusiastic about switching life up for a year, I started doing a board year.

So then I had some choices to make on how to spend this year, and being a fan of all the great activities and drinks Scintilla organizes, I choose internal affairs. Then there was educational affairs, something I was not associated with to the slightest extend before I started the trajectory of being candidate board. Nevertheless after some good thought and conversation I decided that this is precisely the reason that this is the function from which I can learn the most. Furthermore, during my candidate period and now shortly during my time as a board member, I find that this was a great choice. I am learning a lot already in a very short period of time, and with a long year ahead of me I am sure to learn a lot more in the future.

Hopefully I will see many of you plentily this year either in the SK or (preferable) in the Abscint!

Cheers,
Sjoerd van den Belt