Nils found it a great advantage that at VU Amsterdam he had six months before he had to choose a final direction. 'This introduced me to other communication subjects. In the end, this made me know I was right for linguistics.'
'In secondary school, I was good at French and German, but I didn't want to choose a specific language yet. That's when I started looking at linguistics in general.'
English
The study took some getting used to. 'You can no longer just grab information from Wikipedia. You have to read articles and that is quite a challenge. Initially, I also found it difficult to do everything in English. Fortunately, almost everyone struggled with that, so that was not a problem either.'
Contact with lecturers was good. 'If you were worried about something, it was no problem to go to the lecturer, which is more difficult when you are on a course with 600 others.'
Mentorship
Nils was also active alongside his studies. He was on the board of the study association, was a mentor of first-year students and twice supervised a Pre University Masterclass for high school students. 'You get a lot out of that, and not just academically.'
His thesis was on heritage languages. Languages that people learn at birth but that are not the dominant language of society. For example, people who speak Turkish at home, but otherwise only Dutch, and how the dominant language then influences the grammar of Turkish. That was very interesting.'
Future
By now, Nils knows he wants to become a German teacher, which is not possible at the VU. He is now studying in Leiden. 'Thanks to the bachelor's subjects, I can do the premaster here and I don't have to start all over again.'
