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Students of Groningen: ‘Made a tremendous choice’

Luuk Steemers Feature

legal alien-alexandra codreanu_F8A4083-crop (1200x781) Alexandra Codreanu (19)
First-year student of International Business & Management
Romania, 5.7 the size of the Netherlands, 21.5 million inhabitants

‘At high school I organized events and facilities for a choir. I loved doing that. Later I found out that activities like that are the starting point of management and marketing. I also came to realize that I wanted to study in an international environment when I joined an international event with students from ten different countries in Berlin. There I overcame my fear of giving presentations.

‘I chose Groningen partly because some of my friends decided to study at RUG. I myself preferred Hanze because I wanted a study where I could immediately put theory into practice. So in the end everything pointed to International Business & Management at Hanze. So here I am. I think I made a tremendous choice.

It’s time to learn who I am, to get out of my comfort zone and meet new friends!

‘Having grown up in protected and loving environment in Bucharest, I do miss my friends, my mother, my kid sister and my grandmother who always cooked for me. But I feel this was the right thing to do. It’s time to learn who I am, to get out of my comfort zone and meet new friends!

‘Groningen is not big, but not so small that you get bored. The architecture is great too. Many buildings look the same, but the people who live in the houses have put something personal in their homes. I love this what I call organised spontaneity. In the beginning I went out almost every day. Now I prefer to travel in the weekends. I have made a point of visiting all the major cities in the Netherlands. I travel with whoever wants to accompany me.

I want to narrow the gap between business and kindness

‘Yes, I’m a serious person, I guess. I’ll always want to keep learning. When I was young I studied the violin, the guitar, the piano and opera music. I wrote songs, studied German, English and Japanese. I just like getting more knowledge and skills.

‘Achieving things used to be my main objective. Now I mainly wish to understand people better and to be kind to them. I want to prove that you can do business successfully and be a kind person at the same time. I want to narrow the gap between business and kindness and find a line of business that benefits others as well. As a child I dreamed of running a school. Maybe that’s what I should strive to achieve.’