{"id":2899,"date":"2016-08-01T15:36:35","date_gmt":"2016-08-01T13:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=56732"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:22:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:22:10","slug":"im-not-afraid-to-say-that-i-dont-know-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2016\/08\/01\/im-not-afraid-to-say-that-i-dont-know-something\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I\u2019m not afraid to say that I don\u2019t know something’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jonel Timbergen.<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAysha Gasanova<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

In this section, graduates from Erasmus University talk about their lives, careers and what they learned from being at university and in their work, providing useful tips about what you should and shouldn\u2019t do to build up a career.<\/p>\n\t

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Name: <\/strong>Jonel Timbergen<\/p>\n

Age:<\/strong> 28
\nStudy & graduation year:<\/strong> obtained his bachelor degree in Business Administration in 2012 with a research internship at The Walt Disney Company, and got his master degree in Business Information Management in 2014 (both at RSM)
\nCurrent job: <\/strong>has been doing the IT Traineeship as IT Business Analyst at Alliander since June 2014
\nCareer:<\/strong> the traineeship is his first job. As a student, he did an internship at Schouten en Nelissen, studied in Finland, had a job at Deloitte, was a student assistant and was a barista at the Nespresso Academy.
\nMotto:<\/strong> \u2018Do one thing every day that scares you\u2019 (Eleanor Roosevelt)<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n

What I learned as a student.\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cFocuses in the short term \u2013 completing assignments, passing exams \u2013 and in the long term \u2013 graduate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Be critical.\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cAt university, you surround yourself with smart academics. Particularly in the master phase, you are forced to be critical about yourself \u2013 and about your fellow students. I still use that skill in my work today. As a business administrator, I\u2019m not as good at engineering and electrical engineering as most of my colleagues. So I keep asking myself: do I really understand this? If not, I ask as many questions as it takes to really understand the subject or research it intensively myself until I really understand the subject. I\u2019m not afraid to say that I don\u2019t know something, because that\u2019s the only way to learn new things. I learned that attitude and skill at university.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAysha Gasanova<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>

Challenge yourself every day.\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cMy father gave me this advice: try to get the best out of every day and learn something from it. It\u2019s not always a conscious thing, but I do follow his tip in practice. For example, a while back my manager asked me if I\u2019d give a presentation in Frankfurt two days later. My first reaction was: what about my other work? But I went anyway. There I stood on my own, a young business administrator, talking to a group of technical people. In fact, it all went well, the people were nice and I learned something. Now it wouldn\u2019t worry me quite so much if I had to do the same thing next week in the United States, for example.
\nIt\u2019s a good example of doing something different, which adds to your skills. They call it being thrown \u2018off balance\u2019: it has to be just stressful enough to be able to perform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luck.\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cAt the end of 2011, I spent five months working full time for Deloitte in Z\u00fcrich for a cool international research programme at a bank. The opportunity came my way and the timing was interesting, because it was right in the middle of the economic crisis. I worked with lawyers, auditors and bankers from Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands every day. As a result, I quickly learned how Deloitte operated and how you behave in such a professional international team. That\u2019s an experience I wouldn\u2019t have wanted to miss. Even if it meant delaying my studies. I\u2019ve always consciously done things besides my studies. It meant I got to know myself better and enabled me to make a better choice of my master programme. I had to grow into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

More career tigers<\/h2>