How my AIESEC experience started
After one year of being part of AIESEC in Tilburg, I was far from done with AIESEC experience. However, I also felt like I should continue my studies before devoting another year solely to this organization. Therefore, I decided to apply for one of the NST positions for the term 2019/2020. NST stands for National Support Team, which means that the work that the NST does is to support the national board of AIESEC in the Netherlands.
Why the blog?
Although there were many appealing functions available, the function of being a blogger spoke to me most. I have always been a creative person and had an affinity with writing. However, I didn’t have any experience in writing professionally yet. So the blog function was a great way to experience this as well.
The NST term started as of August 2019. Together with my team leader, we started off with defining what we wanted to do with the blog exactly. Things we discussed were which content we wanted to write, how many team meetings we wanted, and how we wanted to collaborate. And then it was actually time to start writing.
What have I learned?
When I look back at all the blogs I’ve written during this term, I believe that my writing has improved quite a bit. I still use the same writing style as in the beginning, but the quality of my phrasings has improved. Moreover, as a blog team member, I learned how to work in a team with solely online meetings (even before the Corona pandemic happened), since Jesler and I live very far apart.
Besides, I started to question small things in life more. This may sound crazy, but when you have to write quite a lot, you get your creativity from looking at the things in life that happen around you. This also includes the ‘normal’ day to day activities. For example, when I wrote one of my blogs: ‘’How to deal with disappointments’’. I got the idea because I had missed my bus the day before.
Lastly, I learned how to be more critical. Not only did I become more critical of my own writing. But also about my own beliefs about life in general. Whenever I started writing a blog, I always looked up information beforehand about that particular topic. And since a lot of blogs are a bit philosophical, I also started to think more about these topics than I would do when I would not have been writing about them.
10/10 recommend my experience!
All in all, I had a great experience being part of the NST blog team for the Netherlands, and I would recommend it to everyone that wants to stay connected to AIESEC and would like to improve their creative writing skills.
This post was written by AIESEC in the Netherlands. We offer international voluntary projects and professional internships with the aim of developing leadership in youth. You can read more about how it is to be part of AIESEC as a member here.
