This article is an opinion piece by a current student or alumnus/alumna of the College of Europe, featured in our monthly newsletter. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of the College of Europe. Responsibility for the content lies solely with the author.
I thought it would be a good idea to keep myself busy after leaving Bruges.
“The last thing you want” a friend had warned me during one of those sunny, not-too-warm April afternoon breaks in the library garden “is to suddenly find yourself at your parent’s breakfast table again as if it was all just a dream.” It was a line that stuck with me, resurfacing often in my thoughts during the last months at the College. I dreaded this perspective. Not that I didn’t want to see my parents again – quite the contrary – but I wanted at all costs to avoid falling into what many people had labelled a ‘post-College black hole’.
It was because of this that I arranged to stay in Brussels for a week just after I had left my residence in Bruges. I had some parties lined up and I would attend a two-day summer school in the EU institutions. It seemed like the perfect, relaxed way to recover from and reflect on what I could only describe to friends from ‘outside’ as “a very intense year” while keeping in motion at the same time. It turned out I was naïve. It still hit me, like a truck.
I spent the Monday of my arrival in Brussels, or the first morning after the College, in a sudden state of dazedness and confusion. I wasn’t so much physically exhausted, rather I felt emotionally drained. The last days in Bruges were filled with parties but also full of goodbyes and the emptying out of the room I had come to see as my home. On the one hand, I felt relieved not having to spend all my meals in a shared and loud-chatter-filled setting such as the canteen (the Northern European in me rejoiced), on the other hand I had suddenly lost the comfortable and carefully constructed routine that consisted of not only studying, but also being with my friends all the time. All these factors, and many more, were simultaneously working their way on my being. For the first two hours I crashed out on the couch.
After unpacking my stuffed weekend bag and buying some groceries (something I hadn’t really done since last September), I opened my laptop and sat down at the small desk in the corner of the apartment room (“It will be great” I had told my friends “I will just chill a bit and also send out some more job applications”). Then the question I’d been carefully repressing in the past few months of papers, thesis writing and final exams suddenly surfaced: now what?
I couldn’t find the answer that easily, and it seemed more of a question of recalibrating myself than immediately getting to the next task on my to-do list. Over the next two days I slept, walked around the city, carefully selected the photos for a LinkedIn “I’m proud to announce I graduated” post – I mean, if it isn’t on social media, did it actually happen? –, produced a similar post for Instagram (with a slightly different tone, of course), read a book, drank coffee in cafés I randomly passed, watched TV and didn’t send out a single job application. It didn’t feel bad, it felt deserved. I had earned this time. Those worries would be for another day.
I left the splendid isolation of this little vacuum in time when the summer school began. It felt like a déjà vu, it was a déjà vu. Suddenly I found myself surrounded again by similarly overly ambitious people who were all, in one way or another, interested in the European Union. “And where are you from?” I heard myself ask multiple times, as if September had never ended. “What did you study?”, “What are your plans after the summer?” Compared to last year’s first semester, however, this time a new feeling took hold of me. It was a certain kind of confidence, the kind that made me navigate the crowd with ease, that made me enjoy having lunch in the institutional canteen, cracking jokes and making sure that my newfound table comrades were all having a good time. It made me dare to ask controversial questions to the different speakers of the summer school, both in English and in French. I had been reshaped, I realised. After months of doing these exact things literally every day, I found myself transformed. It was then I got a somewhat vague idea of what I had gone through these past ten months and just how unique the experience had actually been.
That evening the sun set over the Place de Luxembourg. I hadn’t eaten but had already drunk an entire Leffe blond. The fatigue from the intense day in combination with the tipsiness made it the perfect moment to reflect. Tomorrow, I knew, I really had to go back and face the dreaded spot at my parent’s breakfast table. For the time being, this would be my home again, so I’d better make sure to start churning out those applications. It would be a weird, confusing and maybe even uncomfortable period. Still, I felt calm.
“The only way out is through” I said to myself as I cracked open my second beer on an empty stomach. I watched as the square slowly filled with young men and women in white and pale blue shirts. One day I hoped to join them, perhaps sooner than I realised.
Pol KOOPMAN
Pol Koopman (2000, Bergen op Zoom, the Netherlands) recently graduated from the College of Europe in Bruges, obtaining a Master’s degree in EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies. He hopes to work in EU journalism, preferably being the next author of the POLITICO Brussels Playbook. For now, his plan is to just get his foot in the door.
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