Humans of Honours – Robert Snitselaar

By Jacob Dutkiewicz

Robert Snitselaar, who is about to turn 24 , is in the second year of his BA in history at Utrecht University and a first year Honours student. This year he has been elected to UU’s Humanities Faculty Council. Robert is also a certified technician, he graduated from the MBO (‘middelbaar beroepsonderwijs’) in 2017. I had the pleasure of interviewing Robert for the Humanities Honours blog to talk about his experiences at university, his life during covid and his favourite bars in the city.

‘I like Utrecht. It has something of a metropolis in it but also the quaint feeling of a small village. I come from a small town so it’s something I recognize. I think it’s the most beautiful city in the Netherlands. It has a very interesting history and that’s something I’m obviously very interested in. I liked it a lot more before the lockdown, when I still had lessons in real life. That way, you get the real university experience of actually being in the university building; interacting with your classmates, teachers. It’s different… Luckily, we all aren’t just a black box on a screen anymore.

Picture by Joppe van Gent

Now it’s different but I didn’t make that many friends last year. I wasn’t part of any committees. I had friends studying in Utrecht, from my hometown, and that helped a lot. It was a lot harder to stay motivated while studying online. All my classes are on location now and you have to grapple with the responsibility. You need to participate; you need to do your reading. You can’t just turn off your camera and mute your microphone. It helps with making sense of your day too. During the lockdown I had a lot of work, but simultaneously a lot of time on my hands. It was just laziness. The hardest part were the lectures, especially when they were pre-recorded. You’d start with watching the first two or so lectures on time, but somewhere along the way it goes wrong and then you’re binging five lectures on the day before your exam.

I decided to do Honours because I already had a friend in the programme and he seemed very enthusiastic about what he was doing. It was a good choice, I’m really enjoying it so far. I appreciate the opportunities it offers: you can broaden your expertise or specialize on top of the courses you’re already following. I hope to do a research master here, but if life takes me elsewhere, I don’t mind either. I’m up for election for my city council this year. I’m a member of the JOVD (Jongerenorganisatie Vrijheid en Democratie, a political youth organisation affiliated to the VVD) and I do some commission work for the local VVD office. I really hope to build an academic career, but it’s a very competitive field. So if that doesn’t work out, I guess I can do politics. In the words of the famous Bram Moskowicz, who has since fallen from grace: “I have lost everything. Now I am ready for politics”.

Being involved in a political organization is really what made me apply to university. It exposed me to something entirely different to what I was doing. I did MBO, the equivalent of trade school. I’m a certified technician, which is nice, I guess. But I really wasn’t enthusiastic about what I was doing. I picked MBO because I was underage; you need to pick something… But it’s a four-year programme and I’m not very technically oriented. Not a real “math brain” so to say. And after the first two years, my dad died. That made me question a lot of things; if something I don’t particularly enjoy is what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life. Around the same time I got involved with the local JOVD.

I always really enjoyed reading and writing about history. Doing that was never a chore. So, I went to Nijmegen to study to become a history teacher and my tutor asked me if I’d like to study history at the university. She saw that I should be able to make it. And I applied. It was a shot in the dark, but that’s how I ended up here.

Maybe we won’t get to come back to the university for a while, but when we do finally get out, check out Café Orloff. I liked it before the lockdown and maybe you’ll catch me there. They have good beers on tap.’