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OHMAHGOH ITS HAPPENING!!

We are delivering our baby presentation. We are just finishing it up and we will see you later.

More reflections on the final presentation will follow later on!

But we are excited to deliver our final product :)

- The UNESCO effect team 

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Reflections (4/6)

What has PREMIUM taught you?

With the project, I got to learn a lot about the UNESCO and what changes it can make to a region. More than that, I learned the value of integrating various people with different backgrounds and personalities to generate creativity and create great friendships. Being a PREMIUM student also taught me to better appreciate the skills I have and to be more confident to get to my objectives.

How will you continue to work on your goals or applying the knowledge you have gained?

The workshops and coaching sessions already proved themselves useful as I applied many of the competences discussed during those occasion in my daily life. Furthermore, the research aspect of the project gave me a better idea on how to deal with the T-word in the next few weeks and I am sure that this knowledge will come in very handy very soon.

What are your ambitions after PREMIUM?

Besides finishing my degree and writing my thesis, I want to find a job in a good company in the Netherlands for September. I am also planning on starting a Dutch summer course to better fit in this beautiful country I now call home. Between all of that I hope I’ll have time for some holidays before starting the professional life.

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Last Steps

Today we have another update on what steps we still need to take before we can submit our final product in the form of a report!

We hope you enjoy the little video we made to visualise our tasks due. See you soon :) 

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Reflections (3/6)

What has PREMIUM taught you? I was able to experience what working in a team with people from different nationalities and academic backgrounds can entail and learn how to put different skills and knowledge into practice to work on a project for a real life client, and dealing with all the obstacles and challenges that come with it. This program has also enabled be to reflect on myself and my competences through a critical but constructive lens.

How will you continue to work on your goals or applying the knowledge you have gained?

I will take all the valuable lessons that this experience has, and still is,  providing me as tools to finish my Masters, specially the research techniques developed to complete my Master thesis, but also other valuable competences like the ability to reflect on the work done, receiving and giving feedback and multi-tasking.

What are your ambitions after PREMIUM?

After PREMIUM I will focus on finishing my master degree, which means successfully going through another (and thankfully last) exam period and writing the dreadful thesis. After this I will try to relax and enjoy what there will be left of my summer vacations and try to recharge my batteries enough to start a professional internship at a Portuguese Law firm and get into the Portuguese Bar of Lawyers.  Piece of cake, right ;)

- ROFL Andreia

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Reflections (2/6)

What has PREMIUM taught you?

Besides working in an (amazing!!) group, I really learned how to tackle a project right from the beginning and take it all the way to the end. The project also helped me to develop some more practical skills, for example conducting interviews.

How will you continue to work on your goals or applying the knowledge you have gained?

We had a lot of opportunities to reflect on our progress and develop ourselves further, personally and academically. I will surely use some of these techniques in the future and use some of the practical skills I learned in the negotiation workshop or the leadership workshop.

What are your ambitions after PREMIUM?

After PREMIUM, it’s thesis time! But after that I plan to enjoy a nice summer with my family and find a job where I can apply and use what I learned.

-  Isa

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Reflections (1/6)

Hello everyone, so since the closing event of PREMIUM is getting closer and closer we wanted to reflect on what PREMIUM has taught us and how we plan to utilise our attained skills in the future.

We hope you like these self-reflection reports that are going to come in between our regular content updates :) 

What has PREMIUM taught you?

PREMIUM has taught me a great deal of working in a team of equally motivated students while at the same time integrating my personality and skills into the research process. Moreover, I have learnt to identify and to appreciate certain skills I wasn't aware I had and to actively work on further developing them. 

How will you continue to work on your goals or applying the knowledge you have gained?

As our project was research based I can immediately apply the acquired skills in my Master Thesis research. Moreover, I will try and learn further about what skills I have and which ones I am missing using the ‘Competence Quadrant’ that we received during the ‘develop your competences’ workshop.

What are your ambitions after PREMIUM?

Start Finish my two master thesis (hopefully) on time. After that I hope to find an employment that I enjoy and hopefully continue to work in teams. For now, though I am just hoping for a successful end of our project with results that we are proud of.

- LOL (lots of love), Laura

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The Three P’s

Today, in our meeting we went through the 3 P’s: 1.    Procrastinating 2.    Panicking and, finally, 3.    Productivity.

(Just kidding, we are still panicking).

After lining up a definitive structure for our final report, we got to work on the economic implications of each of the UNESCO status. For the following weeks we will combine the research we have gathered, with the results of the interviews we conducted. At this point, everything is falling into pieces place for the final deadline.

Stay tuned for more news on our project.

Until next time, Rita.

PS: Enjoy the pictures of the UNESCO effect team panicking 

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PREMIUM deadline got us like

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Hello everyone!

We made a little video for you guys to give an insight into how our meetings are structured. Having a solid framework for the meeting and a clear structure has helped us to be able to fully focus on our research while ensuring that no information gets lost and that all ideas are explored to the fullest extent possible.

We hope you like our little creation!

See you soon!

- Laura

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Cathédrale Notre-Dame

It is with great sadness that we learned today about the fire at the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. It has been a World Heritage site since 1991 and every year millions of people come to admire its beauty, old of more than two centuries.

As the UNESCO effect, we feel like it’s our duty to pay tribute to this “symbol of France and European culture”, to repeat Angela Merkel’s words.

With 13 million of visitors per year, the cathedral is the most visited historic building of Europe which just confirms its belonging on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Furthermore, it is also a high place of the catholic faith. Next weekend being Easter, the most important days of the catholic calendar, this fire is a disaster for all the believers.

All our thoughts go to the firemen who are doing everything they can to save this beautiful building.

-      Julie 

on behalf of the UNESCO effect team

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Mid-term Presentation (2/2)

Three weeks later, we feel it's time to reminisce the midterm presentations. This time, though, we'd like to give a shout out to our bonding time as a team.

Our good time started at Laura's, where Aleix gave us a preview of his presentation and Isabelle found true love. As you already know, after a lot of resistence, us girls overpowered Aleix and got him a beautiful sunflower to congratulate his amazing performance. At this point, Aleix knows that complaining is not effective, but he still tries.

Already at the hotel, we (obviously) delved into the food, which entailed a very thorough discussion about what we call melons in our countries (apparently, in Spanish, meloncito is a thing), and a profound disappointment from Aleix at the lack of dessert ( don't worry Aleix, we all felt your pain, except Laura who DOES NOT LIKE CHOCOLATE. like, what?).

But well, that didn't last long because we forgot all about dessert as soon as we caught a glimpse of the chicken wings (yes, we are certainly the most classy team in PREMIUM).

All in all, we had A LOT of fun and we got to know more about each other, which was a really good time. Once again, we'd really like to thank our mentor. It was really nice to enjoy this night with him as well, and to share stories on dark humour and PhDs.

Until next time and, as they say, if you're looking for our team, you can always find us by the chicken wings table.

- Rita

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Underground Adventures

Hello beautiful people,

Last Saturday, we went on a field trip to discover the region of South Limburgand understand what makes it so special. We first met with Bart, our mentor, before going to Valkenburg to visit the ruins of the castle and the mines underneath it. Isabelle drove us there like a pro #FastAndFuriousWithIsabelle.

Sadly, Rita couldn’t come but her spirit was with us (kinda spooky in the mines). Andreia came with 30 layers of clothes. Though it wasn’t necessary at first, weall ended up envying her when we went underground with 12 degrees inside.

We had a private guide to show us around the mine. Yes, a  private  guide,because that’s how we roll, you know. He was really interesting and explained us how much those caves were used over the time. Would you believe it if I told you that there are paintings down there which represent a lot of Limburg’s history? Yeah maybe. But would you believe me if I told you that there is a church down there where people still celebrate baptisms, do proposals and sometimes even weddings? I wouldn’t either but all the above are true. There even are some sculpture and I got a heart attack strongly surprised with one of a Mosasaurus.

At some point, our guide turned off all the light to tell us a story about two boyswho got lost in some caves nearby. Unfortunately, they died in it within a few days and were only found 20 days later. Moral of the story: do not go in the caves without a guide! Even with this scary story, Laura kept it strong in the dark in the mine (we know you weren’t scared girl).

Our tour of the caves done, we went for a short visit of the ruins and some food afterwards because we were starving. After a long conversation over Dutch specialities mostly, we sadly had to go home. Aleix took care of his girls with some music on the way back (no Kit Kat this time but we forgive you). Anyway, that’s it for today and that story. 

Good luck to you all for your upcoming exams.

See you soon,

Julie.

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Mid-Term Presentation (1/2)

BOM DIA A TODOS

So here go our reflections on the midterm presentations that happened on Wednesday.

First of all, as already said in the previous post Aleix did a great job with presenting. We were really pleased with the results given that we really had put a lot of effort in that little presentation.

Next, we were very impressed with everyone’s presentations. We loved all of them; the humour of the ContinuUM Team, the courage of Oana in presenting SilVRmind’s presentation and the team spirit of the A Team. Great work everyone!

Next, along the positive feedback we received from our mentor and the audience we also were made aware of points to improve. Mainly, we are so enthusiastic and so deep into our project that we ran short in explaining the key aspects of the region of Limburg that become relevant for a UNESCO application.

Finally, the questions we received from the audience were very interesting and some were quite tough which helped us to further reflect on our progress.

All in all, we are very grateful for all the insights and the opportunity to share our enthusiasm with the rest of the PREMIUM teams.

Thank you for a great evening!!

- The UNESCO effect team

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A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor

Hello what's popping you guys!! We hope you had a good recovery from the last two days of midterms and you are back in the library (where you all belong). 

We just wanted to quickly pop by and appreciate our Aleix, our male representative in our team and our amazing speaker yesterday. Our team as well as the audience loved the little jokes and the way Aleix kept it entertaining for us all.  Also, he vetoed the flowers a couple of times but he keeps forgetting that we 5 girls are pretty stubborn. So here goes a picture of our hero in a suit with the vetoed flowers ;)

PS: more reflection and fun pictures on the midterms will come. BUT FIRST THINGS FIRST -> THE FLOWERS (and Aleix)

- Laura

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The Wadden Sea 

One of the beautiful sights we are doing our case studies on.

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"Nature is part of the culture: People really lived with the landscape"

Dr. Pieter Calje 

(remember Pieter from our previous post?)

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Another One

Today we met to discuss the final touches on our midterm presentation and to talk about our carnival break. WE HAD MISSED EACH OTHER SO MUCH <3 Also Aleix forces me to tell you all that he fed his girls some KitKats today and we all adore him for that. Thanks Aleix you are da best. 

See you soon!

-Laura