Delft¶

Tags: phd, aec, python

Today I went back to my old university in Delft (Delft university of technology) for a promotion of a former colleague. Marco Dreschler is now a PhD (see his thesis)! I was surprised by the different emotions I had walking around there. In total I spend 14 years in Delft, 8 of them living there, so that’s quite a sizeable part of my live.

• A somewhat sad feeling of not living there anymore. Delft is real nice. Not too big. Historical. Utrecht, where I lived for two years, is also OK in more or less the same way. Nieuwegein, where I live now, is just a 1980’s extension village without history. A few nice spots, but the rest is just for living.
• Happy: I’ve already finished my PhD. I made it!!! And I finished my studies before that (even if it took me a whopping 9 years: 5.5 is average).
• Why o why don’t I do something with my ideas? I’ve got enough construction industry related ideas from my PhD. Ready for implementing. And I’m good at implementing. And pretty all-round, so the rest (layout, business) ought to work out reasonably OK. “Why don’t I do something!” I actually feel a bit ashamed walking around at my university: I’m not doing anything civil engineering-like anymore.
• I’m happy explaining where I work now. The health agency is work you’re basically happy to explain to other people. We’re doing good work. Personalized information for patients to restrict the amount of info they have to digest. That’s a good thing.
• Having studied in Delft: a happy time. Especially my time at my student club C.S.R.-Delft. Good memories!
• Why am I “only” doing IT? I’m good at it. I love python. But I’m not using a big part of my accumulated skills and knowledge: construction industry experience, modeling skills, (xml) format development, information architecture work. And I’m not using my PhD ideas, I’m not bringing them to fruition. I feel like I have to make excuses for doing “only” IT. When walking around the university campus, I feel like my work in the IT industry as such is a good exercise for training my programming muscles: provided I later use it for something construction industry related. That’s just the way I feel out there.

Not all this makes sense, probably. And it is just a snapshot. It is still valuable to me to write it down right now in a pretty unfiltered format :-)