The theme of today was self reflection. First of all, we had to introduce ourselves, saying our names and the reason why we chose IBM. Just to be complete I will do the same here. My name is Lennard de Ridder, I am 20 years old and the reason I chose IBM is because of the fact that I am highly interested in business life. Why then IBM and not a regular business program? The reason is that nowadays businesses are looking for people with an international mind set. I believe IBM will teach me this.

 

After this we had to present our biggest strength and weakness. In my case, my strengths are that I am straight forward, which will help me in leadership, and that I have a good study capacity. The last one is actually a weakness at the same time. I will elaborate on this. When I was in secondary school, I hardly ever had to study. Therefore, I have never been able to teach myself how to study. Last year in university this was one of the reasons why I did not succeed. There was another factor as well but I will come back to that in the motivation section. Another weakness is the fact that I find it really hard to keep up with my planning.

I saw that a lot of students had this problem, combined with distraction and speaking in front of a group. 

 

The discussion we had about stress, not really being a threat because it is an internal factor, was quite interesting. Ruslan stated, in reaction on Maybritt who believed stress was solely a negative thing, that stress was not necessarily a bad thing. He thought that stress could keep you sharp. I must admit that I find some truth in his opinion, but I think that only a bit of stress is good. If you have too much stress, you will suffer from it. What I always do when I experience stress, is go cycling. I will just go for a trip of about 80 or 90 kilometres and then when I get out of the shower, my head is cleared and I can focus on what I wanted to do.

 

The video which was shown was also a really good one. It gave us insight in the fact that we ourselves choose our lives. If you want to cross the line, then go ahead. Nevertheless, we should take into account that there are factors which try to keep us at one side of the line. This could be family for example, not letting you go to a foreign country. In my case, this might eventually become a problem. However, I have always said that I want to go abroad and see the world. The first step was studying in Belgium, but it does not stop here. I have already told my girlfriend that I do not have the wish to keep living in the Netherlands or in Belgium, and fortunately she agrees. My parents would have some difficulties with it, but they would not restrain me from going. 

 

The video was the introduction on the motivation part. My motivation is that I really want to succeed the IBM program and mean something to the business world. I believe that my strengths and my skills can be a great asset for a company. My end goal is to earn enough money to sustain myself and my family, then consisting out of me, my girlfriend, one or two kids and a Newfoundlander dog. Next to this I want to drive a nice car, preferably an Alfa Romeo and drive a motorcycle, preferably a Ducati or Moto Guzzi. I have thought of becoming a truck driver a lot in the past, which was an obvious idea because my father as well as his father is a truck driver. Now, I can fortunately say that this does not spook around in my mind anymore, because I feel at the right place right now. Perhaps I will become a truck driver once, but then that will be when I have my own transportation company. I have set my mind from short term vision to long term vision. Speaking of the profession of my father and my grandfather, I believe that I have inherited my international mind set from them. My father has travelled to the United States in the past and went to Indonesia several times. When I have a good job, I will take him to the Grand Canyon to drive it on a motorcycle. 

 

Last year I experienced some demotivators as well. In November last year, my father-in-law got a CVA. He was just putting the hard top on his Alfa Romeo Spider when he lost all strength in his arm. Fortunately, everything is going back to just where it stopped, but when it happened, our world stopped turning. I was just not able to focus on my school work anymore. 

In addition to this, I had great difficulty with mathematics there. The combination of both made me lose all my motivation and I failed all of my subjects. In the second semester the future looked a bit brighter as my father-in-law was healing way faster then expected. However, when the end of the semester approached, the motivation was gone again, because I could just not see where I was going to end, considering that I had to take at least six exams again. I then followed my instinct, going a step down to high school, but doing the study I always wanted to do: IBM.

 

After the motivation, we discussed study methods today. I do not really have a specific study method, but I use multiple. One I do use quite often is underlining my study material in different colours. The main point is yellow, and its explanation is pink in my case. I find this very easy to create structure in my text. I have seen that a lot of my fellow students thought this is very helpful, and I am glad that I could share this with them. 

 

 

The only thing I have left to say is that until now, the two weeks which have gone by, I was actually able to keep up with my planning. I must admit that I am proud of this, but I am sure that this is the motivation to succeed now. In our introduction session, I told you that I needed a clear set of goals, so well, I thought of them and now I will follow them as the light beacon on the end of the horizon.