Sophie Marijn

During my last year of high school, I looked at quite a lot of various history programmes throughout the Netherlands. Yet, even when looking at other history studies, the version at the Rotterdam University never left my mind. The International Bachelor History spoke to me because of its unique programme and challenges. The interesting part of it that it is the only study where I feel that you do not focus entirely on Europe from a European perspective and instead on the whole globe and how they were before Europe colonized them.

Furthermore, you learn various other perspectives to approach history, such as the look from the colonized instead of the colonizers or from the point of view from minorities. It taught me that there was more to history than just the Europeanized version of it and that there were more histories to learn instead of those taught in high school.

Something I had to learn how to deal with was the fast pace of the history bachelor. While on one hand had it is great that during your first year you only focus on one course at the time, on the other hand it makes the courses quite fast paced and you cannot afford to fall behind. Yet, with the help of the lecturers and my fellow students it ended up being quite doable.