Six months after Jur flew back to the Netherlands under medical supervision, he moved into the dorm where he had lived before his exchange with Harvard. With no recollection of his seven housemates, he moved into his old room in the centre of Rotterdam, around the corner from Café De Witte Aap. At home, his housemates were members of the Rotterdam Student Corps, as was Jur himself. On his return, Jur held a more senior position on account of his age and was no longer responsible for buying toilet paper; the newest residents took care of this now. The customs in the house were confusing for Jur. “I didn’t understand why I should be unkind to the youngest housemates, who are incredibly friendly guys.”
In the process, there were some jokes suggesting that Jur should redo the hazing, but even with no memory of the early days, he was welcome at the student parties. The first time he entered the association building, he was a bit shocked by how people were acting. “People were throwing beers and pulling at other people’s jackets. I ended up going to a few parties, but you don’t have to drink beer to be a student. My focus was on graduation.”
No more yesterday
Jur summarises the story that he himself has forgotten but has since told so many times that he reproduces it as if it were his own memory. In the third year of his studies, he made a trip to Harvard University, where a period of many friends, hard work and little sleep followed. During spring break, Jur was not feeling well, but that did not stop him from going on holiday in Mexico with his friend Kevin. Jur started behaving strangely; at some point, Kevin found him shirtless on the street, looking for a friend living in Copenhagen.
Things did not go well. Jur was suffering from encephalitis. The herpes virus – which also causes cold sores – had entered his brain. He ended up in a critical condition. From the hospital in Mexico, he was transferred to a hospital in San Diego, where he spent his days in a sub-comatose state. His parents came over to America, where after a few weeks, with his parents’ agreement and on the advice of an uncle with a medical background, the doctors switched to an experimental treatment that until then had only been tested on rats. Eventually, Jur came to and did not recognise his own mother.
One goal, two diplomas
After a period of rehabilitation in the Netherlands, he became a student again. While his housemates slept off their hangover in the morning, Jur hit the library early on to study. He wanted to go to bed on time, pay attention to sports and track his steps with a watch. Sometimes, his ‘energy management’ went haywire and his housemates put him to bed after he fell asleep on the sofa. But Jur was determined to get his diplomas. The rehabilitation centre had warned his parents that he would never graduate. ‘Just wait’, Jur thought, and he picked up his studies in both economics and philosophy. First, he took a few courses he had passed before, to brush up, and then he attended new lectures. New or old had little meaning to Jur; for him, there was purely the unknown.
He entered that unknown with curiosity. He regularly informed fellow students of his memory loss, upon which he immediately asked if they had noticed anything. ‘His curiosity’ was invariably the answer. “And”, a fellow student from one of his tutorials mentioned via Whatsapp, “you always nod along with the professor’s story. And you ask questions because you want an answer, not because they would be exam material.” Jur shrugs his shoulders, but at the same time, he is aware that his behaviour ‘apparently’ stands out. “I need feedback to know when my behaviour becomes irritating; I don’t want to be the irritant one. That’s something I’m not always aware of. I am learning that.”
Social rules are implicit
At a Christmas party at his parents’ house, Jur enthusiastically told an acquaintance about his thesis. Every time he got too close, the acquaintance took a step back. Jur continued to ramble on and just stepped along. They ended up walking three-quarters of a circle around the table, after which his mother later told Jur he could adopt an arm’s length distance from the other person as a rule of thumb in future. “People have to tell me these things. Otherwise, I just won’t know.”
And even when people tell him how he should and should not behave, there can be some curve balls in practice. Right after his mother had explained to him that he shouldn’t call his mother or grandmother ‘darling’, the flower seller in the Jordaan addressed Jur’s mother as darling.
University and even exams are also not without social codes. “In exams, it is important how you answer a question. This is complicated. I did not give the answers according to the answer model”, says Jur. His little brother sometimes gave him some pragmatic advice by looking at old exams and concluding that Jur could just skip some chapters while studying.
In the end, aside from knowing everything, his goal was still to graduate. For his last course, just before the finishing line, he got a 5.4 for his exam. He could dream the material, so he somewhat indignantly went to the opportunity to view the completed test. There, the professor read over his answers several times and then concluded that Jur had truly understood the material. The only problem was that his answers did not meet the requirements on the answer sheet. “I got a 6.4.”
The future
Jur completed both his Economics and Philosophy programmes with a thesis on memory, concluding that people are the story they tell themselves. He calls himself a curious guy who wants to know more about how brains work and wants to make the world a better place with his foundation ItsME – for more awareness of encephalitis and meningitis. “We know more about the moon than about our own brains”, concludes an astonished Jur, “while in the Netherlands, 10 to 15 people a day are affected by encephalitis and meningitis.”
The foundation has already funded eight studies into the brain. They are all dear to him, but when asked to choose only one, he mentions research into risk factors for the development of encephalitis. What is the cause? He himself is already taking a stab at it. At Harvard, he worked too hard and slept too little. “I’ve read back conversations where I told friends at three in the morning that I was still working. Eight hours of sleep, Jur. That’s what I would say to that guy.”
The person Jur was before is not the same as he is now. In recent years, he has mostly searched for what suits him, for who he is himself without learned patterns. His political preferences have changed, as have his ambitions. From stories, he knows that the person he used to be wanted to become an economic consultant. Now, he is training to be an economics teacher and goes to the Socrates café in Amsterdam every Sunday. He wants to help people and train students. With his foundation, he aims to broaden knowledge and create awareness of encephalitis and meningitis. He hopes GPs will recognise symptoms more quickly so that lives can be saved. He regularly gives lectures, ending with an advice to the audience: “I wouldn’t recommend getting as sick as I was to anyone. But I advise everyone not to be a victim of the past, but rather a director of the future. Live open-mindedly, because we can learn a lot from the unknown.”
