Here in the Netherlands you can take virtually as long as you like to finish university. Where I live, it’s not unusual to run into guys – they’re usually guys – in their late twenties who’ve been studying for eight years and still haven’t obtained their bachelor’s degree. (They obtain beer bellies instead.) The Dutch government tried to do something about this by implementing a langstudeerboete, a fine for students with a study delay, but it got dismissed almost the minute it went through.
This reminded me of the following. In the center of my hometown, there’s an alley which used to be a no-bike zone. The Dutch are big on cycling, obviously, and when it comes to cycling, traffic laws tend to be ignored. Red lights? One-way lanes? Don’t make us laugh! Similarly, the idea of a ‘no-bike zone’ simply does not exist in the Dutch conceptual system. Flocks of school kids, students on rattling hand-me-downs, mothers with toddlers front and back, elderly couples on tandem bicycles; everyone cycled in the no-bike alley. Cops used to guard it on either side to fine every single culprit, but to no avail. We persevered in our fundamental right as Dutch people to turn the world into one big bike lane until, one day, the cops were replaced by this sign:
Cycling permitted; bonus points for not knocking people off their feet.
There’s a Dutch proverb, de aanhouder wint – literally ‘the one who persists wins’. The Dutch are stubborn. We do not bend to legislation; legislation bends to us.
To return to the topic of studying:
At the college I went to, it’s compulsory to get your bachelor’s degree in the prescribed three years. I graduated last month. Funnily enough, people keep asking me why I “quit” my studies there. No one considers the possibility that, you know, I finished my degree on time. (Admittedly, it’s normal here to do your master’s at the university where you did your bachelor’s. My alma mater, which doesn’t offer master’s programs, is somewhat of an anomaly in this sense.)
After a lengthy process of elimination during which I systematically considered and then rejected various Master’s programs such as Film Journalism in Glasgow, English Language in Oxford, and Creative Writing, Editing and Publishing in Melbourne, I ended up applying for a Master’s in English Linguistics at the University of Leiden, twenty minutes down the railroad from my hometown. More specifically, I’m doing a specialization called ‘Translation in Theory and Practice (Dutch/English)’. Depending on who asks and how much time I have to explain, I’m either studying English or becoming a translator.
My few remaining doubts about the specificness of this study and its supposed lack of good job prospects – then again, does anything have good job prospects these days? – vanished during my first class in translation last week. Not only is the process itself a lot of fun, but my (awesome) professor also has a flair for fantastic one-liners which I scribble into the margins of my actual notes. A brief cross-section:
- “Translators seem to like attics”, as opposed to interpreters who allegedly prefer to be in the spotlight.
- “Translators are eigenwijs (stubborn).”
- “To be a translator, you need to be a bit of a linguistic prostitute.”
In other words, I’m currently studying to become a linguistic whore who confines herself to the attic and perfects her Dutch tendency for stubbornness through her profession. My parents will be so proud.
All of this makes me smile.