Student story Sam

In high school, Sam sometimes struggled to open his textbooks and get to grips with the material. At HAS, he learned to motivate himself.  "I've seen how rewarding it can be to learn new things."

He has also grown professionally. Sam still finds holding a presentation in front of a group stressful, but he’s making solid progress: ''In my final year of study, I worked as a presenter and announced the start of the introduction day in Venlo, for about 200 new first-year students from HAS, Maastricht University and Fontys. Awesome!''

Sam booked another victory when he passed the 'bimitox exam' (also known as 'the sample exam'), in which the subjects microbiology, biotechnology and toxicology are tested in a single exam. “After my roommates and I all passed the test, we had a big party."

So, what are Sam's highlights after four years of study? He says it was taking, and later teaching, the beekeeping course. ''Working with bees is really interesting and relaxing, and I’m proud that I’ve been able to pass on this passion to twelve other students.”

For his professional assignment, Sam helped the province of North Brabant build a prediction model for the oak processionary moth. The model predicts where this moth will cause the most damage in the province, and what kind of action can be taken. '’This resulted in an awesome presentation, which I’m really proud of!''

Sam did his first internship at ARK Nature, where he investigated the effect of cadavers on surrounding vegetation. ''I've been using camera traps to study scavengers. It’s a really complicated but very cool study!"

His second internship was at Econsultancy, where he worked on various ecological issues. He enjoyed it so much that he was even offered a job. “I’m now working as an ecology project leader. I help clients with their issues, and I spend a lot of time outside monitoring butterflies, bats and birds."

Who knows, maybe we’ll see Sam back at HAS one day. He hopes that, as a teacher, he’ll be able to share his passion for ecology even more with others in the future.