My 2010 Reflections
The moment just after New Year is always a good time to reflect back on the previous year and set your goals for the year to come.
Work
2010 was a great year for me. I was able to work at Caret, which is part of the University of Cambridge. My main task was to work on Sakai OAE, which is an online learning environment.
One of the major things I liked about the project is that is was completely open. Everybody can get the project for free, use it themselves and modify if necessary. Near the end of my stay at Caret, I attended and even presented (many thanks to Lance Speelmon) at the 2010 Sakai conference in Denver. It was an amazing experience and it felt great to actually meet the people in real life. I worked with quite a lot of them on-line, but never actually saw them.
University College Ghent
This was probably the hardest decision I had to make in 2010. To decide whether I would go back to study or not is a big deal. But having worked for over a year I decided to study again. Currently I’m studying to become an industrial engineer in informatics at the University College Ghent. It’s a difficult course though, so lets work hard and hope for the best!
Sailing
For over 2 years now, I am a sailing instructor at Sycod in Oostduinkerke, Belgium. My passion for sailing still increases every time I set foot on a boat. It is hard to describe the feeling but one of the things I like about it is the feeling of surrendering yourself:
You surrender yourself to the sea with its currents and waves and to the wind with its unpredictable gusts.
In September I started a course to become what we Belgians call a “sailing initiator”. This is basically a certificate which allows you to teach other people how to sail. I didn’t really need it, since I was already teaching other people, but I still learned quite a lot about boat maintenance, weather conditions and first aid. The main reason I took this course is to try to improve myself, which is something I should never stop doing. So far I’ve passed all the theoretical exams but I still need to do a few days of internship at another club.