Foreword chairman FIRST Maastricht

Foreword

Dear reader,

You have this second edition of the FIRM in your possession, which marks that we’re already halfway through this academic year. The same applies for our board year and slowly but certainly we are looking at the upcoming academic year.

As written before, the first semester has come to an end and 2020 lies in our past now. Time has flown by this first half year, and unfortunately that’s not only because of positive things. Many students have spent a major part of their time in their room the last months, with just a handful of people to keep you company. We doubtless all imagined this year to be very different than how it turned out to go. Often your student time is referred to by ‘the best time of your life’, but nowadays it’s hard to experience it that way, due to all the limitations.

For FIRST, the same applies: this year has a very different completion than how we expected everything to go in the beginning. Meetings are practically impossible, catering sector and hospitality industry are shut down and it is irresponsible to travel with a group of students in these times. We have had to make some hard decisions and have had to switch gear very fast to make sure we made the best out of it. And that’s exactly something I want to point out: we make the best out of it. And I am incredibly proud of that. Up until now, we did everything we could to adjust activities so they could still take place and make great memories together. That’s thanks to our active members and their creativity, flexibility and effort. They all pushed themselves to lead everything in the right direction. And it’s thanks to my fellow board members which have all stayed super positive and think about solutions rather than problems. But it’s also thanks to our members, who still attend our activities, even if they take place differently than originally intended.

FIRST excels in this. Our association doesn’t throw the towel, doesn’t just look at the limitations, but looks for opportunities. We can all be very proud of this. I want to appeal to you all to keep this up and to benefit from it. Put effort in our association. Attend our activities. Stay positive. Because that way, regardless of the setbacks, we make our student time the best time of our lives!

A big thanks to the FIRM-committee for manufacturing a beautiful edition of the FIRM again and lots of fun reading our association magazine.

Hope to see you soon,

Sanne Fresow

President 2020-2021