Column
"I often forget that people will read my columns when I'm writing them, so the work is free from my internalised, imagined gaze of others"
Home
Articles
News & Background
Dossiers
Budget cuts
Einstein telescope
Integration UM/MUMC
Internationalisation
Israel-Palestine
Recognition and Rewards
Student housing
Work pressure and stress
People
Science
Columns & Opinion
Jessica Alleva
Jonas Heller
Pablo del Hierro
Yuki Nakamura
Tom Smejka
Rita Wiśniewska
Sally Wyatt
Letter from the editor
Service
Archive
About us
Advertisement
Courses
FAQ
Announcements UM
General
Students
FHML
FPN
FASOS
SBE
FSE
Law
Monthly agenda
Vacancies
In memoriam
50 years UM
NL
Nederlands
Letter from the editor
Editor-in-chief Wendy Degens gives a look behind the scenes at the editorial office.
Editorial
Holle Bolle Gijs
'Thank you’, reader, for devouring our paper for 46 years
Editorial
Coming soon (or not)
"Some ideas don’t lead to anything"
Editorial
We’re going to win
"We hope to beat the twenty competitors to the top prize"
Editiorial
Indispensable
"For Mother’s Day, I received an AI-generated postcard"
Editorial
We're dropping the paper version
"Now we are very deliberately and completely voluntarily choosing to drop the paper version. It feels weird"
Editorial
Seven steps
"An instruction manual explaining the seven steps: it was in the attic for years"
Editorial
What are you doing here?
"Of course, I understand his position, someone who is not immediately identifiable as a journalist, who has been observing an ‘unsafe’ area for three hours, is suspicious"
Editorial
Made-up stuff
He admitted he had “underestimated the power of AI hallucinations”
Editorial
Confidential
"Leaving a recording device in the room? Never even crossed our minds"
Editorial
“Good job”
"Nobody here has the time to read through every single one of the 19,000 scanned Observant pages"
Editorial
Ping pong
Tuesday’s ping-pong session
Editorial
Blacklisted
"You open the attachment and almost fall off your chair in shock"
Editorial
Silent recluses
"Unwell and trapped in a body unable to move"
Editorial
Ultra VIPs
"How can we get some of those premium tickets next year?"
Editorial
To write or not to write?
"This young man needed the right care and not more media attention, we concluded"
Editorial
TikTok
"If I see something on my feed forty times, or so, then I know it’s real", he said
Editorial
Stress
"In November, the pause button for Observant seemed very far away"
Editorial
What do you want to be when you grow up?
"He doesn’t yet know what will make him truly happy, or what he’s good at"
Editorial
Stupid comment
“Ignoring it is no longer an option"
Editorial
Cross-pollination
"There is usually some ‘larger’ scientific article or background story for page 6-7, but now I felt we had a gap"
Editorial
The desk
“A university newspaper, how interesting. But is there really that much to write about?”
Editorial
Prof X
"This makes all the professors of that department look suspicious"
Editorial
Snacking
Short, intense ‘snacks’ are said to improve your metabolism and overall fitness
Editiorial
True colours
Voting with my heart
Editorial
Hydra
Back in the nineties the communication with students was incredibly simple and comprehensible
Editorial
Dare to ask
“A question is a tool. It is a way to get into the mind of another person"
Editorial
Cycling to work
"As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder"
Editorial
“Curious”
"Admittedly, the Instagram algorithm has a way of getting on our nerves"
Editorial
Out of your comfort zone
Insiders have told us they need time and space; the last thing they need is journalists
Editorial
Nobody’s going to read that
Sometimes it’s just the word “HEADLINE?!”, hoping a colleague will have a brainwave
Editorial
Old junk
What we found in one of the closets? Padlocks, forty years old. And they had an amazing purpose back then
Editorial
No litany of complaints
Will we need to start bringing consent forms to every interview?
Editorial
It’s been a good run
The second lesson came printed on a coffee mug a former editor once brought in: “Sometimes a colleague knows better”
Editorial
A wave of emotion
How well do we really know ourselves? It seems I can still surprise myself
Editorial
Made a mistake? Own up to it
Ouch – we missed that second email
Editorial
The milk carton on the windowsill
As it’s a small building, the job usually requires almost no effort at all
Editorial
Help! I want to write!
My first time calling someone for an interview: nerve-racking. Seeing my first article in print: a milestone
Editorial
Show-offs
The older students’ pretentious behaviour irritated me to no end
Editorial
Sometimes we have to sit on our hands
At times, it takes all our willpower not to jump into the conversation
Editorial
Thirty women and one man
A perfect spot for lovers, a place to cherish
Editorial
“I don’t like having my picture taken”
Maybe that’s part of why I became a journalist – to stay on the other side, behind the scenes
Editorial
It may be tempting to bury your head in the sand
I find myself wanting to change the channel or put down the newspaper when faced with yet another item on one of Donald Trump’s countless executive orders
Editorial
Privacy? Don’t make me laugh
The names of people who hold an administrative position at the university should, by definition, be known
Editorial
Out of coffee
It wasn’t as simple as just placing an order online
Editorial
“You’re not God”
“I shouldn’t have made that mistake”, I’d tell my coach
Editorial
A personal interview that was deemed “too personal”
The interviewee thanked us for sending her the article but said she had changed her mind
Editorial
A small revival of Limburgish
Whenever he hears someone speak the local dialect, he switches to it
Editorial
Passing the torch
The right time to let someone else take the helm and face the winds, whether gentle spring breezes or severe autumn storms
Editorial
“There’s zero information coming from UM”
“Which budgets will be affected? And how big is the problem? Do an analysis and be transparent"
Editorial
“You look good for your age”
Very kind of him, you might think. And until recently, that’s exactly what I thought
Editorial
Tiny little room
Not only is she a skilled writer, but she’s also adept at reading between the lines
Editorial
The Monday hurdle
I still felt a pang of anxiety during our weekly editorial meeting after autumn break
Editorial
“Is this really national news?”
A flurry of digital excitement, along with a bit of confusion and a stream of congratulatory emojis
Editorial
Cardboard boxes in a back room
Improperly parked bikes being flipped upside down; students carrying around oversized drinking cups with straws
Editorial
I’ve come to appreciate my accent
An Observant-podcast? Let's put our heads together
Editorial
Uncomfortable is not the same as unsafe
If we need to discuss something, could we do it inside our offices instead of half-standing in the hallway?
Editorial
“I haven’t got anything done all day”
She no longer looks like she did four years ago and feels uncomfortable with it being up
Editorial
What’s old, what’s new
Is it a case of old wine in new bottles? Not at all – we’re using the exact same format precisely because it works so well
Editorial
Putin and a first-year student
What struck me was that most first years had either lost or left their mentor group on the very first day
Editorial
Field trip
A few colleagues, still or again in field trip mode, became a bit unruly as the day progressed
Editorial
Waiting, waiting and more waiting
The print version of Observant was already outdated by the time it hit the university newspaper racks
Editorial
“Media out”
Our repeated requests for comments are not always successful
Editorial
Plusses and minuses
I knew almost immediately I’d be willing to leave my beloved Nijmegen, where I had studied, for it
Editorial
Premature or irrelevant
" I know from experience that good ideas for articles don’t just materialise out of thin air"
Editorial
“We’ll get rid of the printer, but you are irreplaceable”
After more than 25 years as an editor at Observant he will continue as a freelance journalist
Editorial
Clumsy sentences and shrinking vocabularies
So, read! Read to brush up on your language skills
Editorial
Journalists have to ask the uncomfortable questions
"I didn’t ask", the intern said. Why not? "Well, it might have been awkward"
Editorial
Dilemmas: when is a matter private and therefore not of interest to Observant?
“Are you suggesting we postpone the article? It would look like we were sleeping on the job”
Editorial
Burning questions about sex
"Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do; in other words, don’t have sex with anyone"
Editorial
Two years since that awful day
"I went to bed on an ordinary Wednesday evening, only to wake up at 4 AM to the sound of bombs exploding nearby"
Editorial
“The one time I try to go local…”
Even though most of us are in fact from Limburg, her invitation received a lukewarm response
Editorial
It was with a heavy heart that we refused
Some emails confront us with dilemmas
Editorial
Were we being too negative?
Well, obviously we could ask more nuanced questions, but they don’t always yield the best answers
Editorial
Farewell party
She’s a lovely person to have coffee with and talk about life
Editorial
Making money from cycling to work
Zuyd University of Applied Sciences offers bike commuters 21 cents per kilometre
Editorial
“This is going to sound really cheesy, but so be it”
Has 2023 been a special or unusual year for the Observant team?
Editorial
“Take the smallest, ugliest office”
A crash course in leadership, thanks to columnist Japke-d. Bouma
Editorial
No mouse sightings yet
Something will eventually come to mind. It has to – not writing is not an option
Editorial
What about The Hague?
We quickly agreed that it wouldn’t be feasible
Editorial
Leave it to the professionals
Another colleague encountered a rather grumpy person this week
Editorial
No conflicting roles
A member of our foundation board must be free to act, without having potentially conflicting roles
Editorial
“Terrible journalism”
We were on autumn break for a week, but the news never stops
Editorial
A dent in Eindhoven’s image
The weekend came, war with all its horrors broke out between Israel and Hamas, our own problems suddenly seem so utterly trivial
Editorial
And the rector of Nijmegen resigned
In our discussion following each question, I found myself constantly shifting perspectives
Editorial
A kick up the backside
The kick was meant to be all in good fun, but my colleague could’ve taken offence
Editorial
A stolen Bazooka
"That fear has stayed with me my entire life. It turned me into a goody-two-shoes"
Editorial
Tired eyes around five PM
Mastering the skill of being a good colleague
Editorial
A PhD candidate’s nerves
"I’ve rarely paid such close attention to an academic ceremony"
Editorial
Walking? Boring!
For our next annual outing, we’ll do something different, I promise
Editorial
“I could’ve been a tad less defensive”
The will and capacity to learn, enthusiasm for the profession, and a pleasant personality
Editorial
The bad stuff sticks
I keep a list of possible topics to write about here; more than half of them are about problems and grievances
Editorial
Choice means loss
We looked each other in the eye and decided it’s time to change course
Editorial
Haste makes waste
The meeting agenda was endless. We’d scheduled a good four hours for it
Editorial
No Foxes Allowed
She had just made the local news and wanted us to hear it first-hand
Editorial
A panellist surrounded by controversy
To go or not to go, that's the question
Editorial
High workload
"The day is still young, but my to-do list isn’t shrinking fast enough"
Editorial
High workload
"The day is still young, but my to-do list isn’t shrinking fast enough"
Editorial
A slightly annoyed tone
'You’ve made it seem like only a very small minority of UM employees support Rianne Letschert’s position’
Editorial
Cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis
One of us had snorted a line of coke once
Editorial
Blunt, impatient and irritable
Going into an interview like a bull in a china shop hardly inspires confidence
Read More