In this edition of the CEStafette Belinda Leusink is interviewed by NICOLA AMORUSO
Welcome! Thank you for having me here for this interview. First, would you like to introduce yourself?
Hi, I am Belinda Leusink-Bokxem, I am married to Rene Leusink and we have two children together: Fleur who is 17 and Bram who is 10 years old. Two teenagers, the oldest one is almost no longer a teenager, but the youngest one is just starting. It is really fun and keeps you busy. I have been working for BOZ for a year now, but in total, I have worked at the sports centre of the University for seventeen years.
I have already known you for a while because I have had sports lessons from you at the sports centre. What exactly do you do at the sports centre?
At the sports centre, I give group lessons. This is why I started working at the University and have been doing this for so many years. The lessons I give are Body Pump, Body Balance, spinning, Pilates, and the BBB (Dutch for “Belly, Buttocks and Legs”). Of course, I am not that old yet, but at some point, you get too old for giving lessons twenty hours a week. I always participated in the lessons that I taught. Sometimes, I have five hours of lessons a day, which is a lot. I was able to keep that up for a long time. I have quite a strong body; I never actually had any injuries, but over the last two or three years there have been aches and pains here and there. I just noticed that my body needed more time to recover, but I did not have time for that, because I had to teach the next day.
How did you come to work here?
Well, that is a coincidence. I was toying with the thought of how long I was doing the work that I am doing now. Then one evening, I thought: well, let’s take a look at job vacancies. I had not applied for a job in years. Previously, I worked in youth care, but I did not want to do that again. And I looked at the UT site and the BOZ vacancy came up. And although I have no experience in that at all, I applied I did not work with a laptop and things like that, but Google helped me to write an application letter and a CV. To my surprise, I was invited for an interview. I was quite relaxed in that interview; it was mainly a fun conversation with Hans. The discussion quickly focused on the work that I was doing at the time, so I told him I did not know how computers work yet, but with him in charge, I should get it down within 5 minutes. Of course, this could not easily be visualised and therefore caused a lot of laughter. Two days later, I received a call from Hans, who indicated that he wanted to invite me for a second interview. I was very surprised. The second conversation involved my current colleagues. It was more or less to gain their approval, to see whether you fit into the group. I thought that I would have to go through another application round, but we had a nice conversation. Less than an hour after I was gone I received a call and was offered the job. Then things got serious. They had a lot of fun about it at home: they asked did I even knew how to turn a PC on and off.
Did you need to learn a lot for this function?
I knew how to turn on the PC. But yes, there were some challenges to overcome. It Is funny: I had worked here for a few weeks and needed a blank Word document, but I did not remember how to make one. So I said to my colleagues: “his question will haunt me for years, but how do I get a blank sheet of paper?”
There are a few courses that I want to take, for instance, I want to improve my English and knowledge of working with Excel. I find Excel a disaster. I have been told that most people think so.
What does your position as course administrator entail?
We keep track of every student’s graduation and progress. We mainly come into the picture by the time when they graduate: we request that diplomas are made and first run a check on whether they have completed everything and if there are still things that they need to do – Also, whether all ECs have been obtained and if they graduate with honours if the grade average is high enough. We take minutes at the exam committee’s meetings, which is mainly done in English, and if decisions come out or requests are made, we also process them or turn them down if necessary.
You mentioned in our email conversation that you are going on a ski vacation end of the week.
Yes, that will be the third time this season, and yes, it is very decadent. We have been going to Italy for the last three years, where we have found a beautiful spot, with a house on the slopes. This weekend, we are going to Austria; we have the luxury that friends of ours own a house there. This time I will be going with just my husband, without the children. In the summertime, we want to go to Bari, a place in the south of Italy. It is supposed to be a very nice place to visit.
What do you do in your spare time besides sport?
I also have a salon for permanent make-up at home, For eyebrows and eyeliner. I have been doing that for four to five years now. The initial intention was that I would do that permanently and teach less. But then Covid hit, which meant that I often had to close the salon, even though I had just started. My husband has his own coffee roasting company. It was an uncertain time, but it Is too much fun not to do it, so that is what I do in my spare time. So actually I have three jobs.
I am not a party animal who goes to the pub every weekend. I prefer home parties with snacks, drinks and friends. I do not much for drinking wine or alcohol in general, but I prefer sweeter drinks such as Passoa with orange juice. And then I discovered something new, which is a gin and tonic with pink Gin. It is delicious.
Thank you for this interview and enjoy your holiday!
