Grateful is the word Hassnae, the 2023 Student of the Year, uses to describe her feelings. “I didn’t expect that students I mentor would nominate me for the election,” she says. When she began her studies, she had little guidance, she says. That’s why she loved becoming a mentor so she could help first years. “It is not always easy to be a mentor, because in addition to questions about the program, you are sometimes confronted with new students’ personal problems,” she says. She further hopes that there will be more diversity and inclusion in the medical field.
In the second part of the broadcast, EM reporter Elliot Zepeda talks about an annoying problem for many international students. Students who don’t have a last name (because their countries don’t distinguish between a first and a last name) are listed with a dot or dash as a first name in the Dutch Basisregistratie Personen. “Besides the practical problems this brings, the human side of this is important,” he says. “Your name is your identity, so because the Netherlands does not register their name correctly, they get the feeling that they are not welcome in this country.”