“Sure, see you later!”, I said.
It was Thursday and I expected us to go to the cinema together or something like that.
I was waiting with Erik and Jeroen didn't show up, so strange. I was having drink three when Jeroen finally walked in, together with Dennis.
“Finally!” I said.
“Come with us,” they said,
“but first we're going to blindfold you!”
“What?”, I laughed, “What orgy should I expect now?!”
I was super curious. They helped me into the car together and we left. Where to? The car just kept going in circles – I had no idea where we were going.
The car stopped.
“We're here!” said Jeroen.
They opened my door and helped me get out. I thought I heard some familiar sounds, but I couldn't place them. They led me inside somewhere, through a few doors.
“Sshtttt!” I heard someone hiss.
Huh? Suddenly my blindfold came off and –wow! We were standing in my apartment, in my room - and my whole room was painted! Jeroen and Dennis had done this, together with other people from the block, fellow students, refugees – so many lovely people had helped!
“What did I do to deserve this?!” I asked,
with just a few tears in his eyes. I looked up: balloons with streamers were hanging from the ceiling.
“Just Dennis, just like that!”
“Wow guys, wow,” I said.
“The room needed some decoration,” said Jeroen.
“There were only men hanging against the wall here!”
We all started laughing. I went and bought some containers of beer and soft drinks to share with the whole group and other people who wanted to join us. Even though it was just before the exams, it was a wonderfully fun and warm party. Just as was the case in high school, I had a lot more
I feel like organizing things outside of school rather than dealing with my own school work. I met Kurt, a nice man who ran a student café. He was gay too – but
we didn't start anything together, he already had a lover. Through Kurt and his café I met a lot of new and nice people, including people who were on a student council. They had a nice idea: an umbrella infor-mation magazine for the students of Diepenbeek and Hasselt, published by them and other
student associations. How were you supposed to organize something like that? I was more than happy to start thinking along!
By that time I was really starting to form a large network, including Hubert and his wife. They had a large tourism office in Kiewit – with a large back room. That would be one
I thought it could be an ideal newsroom for a student newspaper. One chat with Hubert later, it was ar-ranged.I founded a non-profit organization, DE STUDENT, together with Dominiek and Jeff, two good friends who also really liked the idea. We flew in, approached sponsors, put together our editorial team and I was appointed editor-in-chief.
It failed. Student newspaper DE STUDENT never came into existence. The boat had already sunk before we had even left. We made the big mistake that many young people make: we wanted to do everything alone.
There were much more competent people than me who could have handled the editorial better. We had 0.0 francs starting capital and wanted to spend it all ourselves. We found no advertisers and were already in trouble with our first test issue, number 0. We should have kept it purely to creative work - and left ed-iting and marketing and everything else to more suitable people, such as Het Belang van Limburg. We could have tried to start a collaborative relationship, instead of just wanting to “use them as a platform” without anything in return. To make matters worse, someone had started talking to 't Koerierke, Het Bel-ang's major competitor, without permission from the non-profit organization - and when they heard this at Het Belang, it was all about books. It was a very sad thing. THE STUDENT failed - just as my attempt to continue my studies failed. I not only went out often in Hasselt, but also in Brussels and Antwerp.
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