What is in my backpack?

Miss Jolly said the most intriguing and at the same time scary question someone can ask you is: “Can you tell me about yourself? “. I find it great to talk about myself because who else do you know better than yourself! But when asked directly I still stammer, blush, stumble over words and become self-conscious. What should I really tak about? What’s so important about ume? And do I actually really know myself?

This subject helps you identify your strenghts and weaknesses so you can focus on improving them. The main objective of this subject was understanding yourself better as a person and as a student. And being able to capitalize on this knowledge. It also teaches you to be able to (co-)construct your learning experience to fit your own motivations, preferred styles, brain and knacks. Most people relatively find it easy to dodge the ‘tell-me-about-yourself’-question; they can walk away, or start a new topic, or just say “I don’t want to talk about me, let’s talk about you!”. But in professional situations, for instance at job interviews or network events, you will be expected to be able to articulate a coherent response. And that response will need to meet some quality criteria : an intelligent one, that shows you have strong self-awareness and can connect the dots that make up who you are, that shows you know your ‘brand’.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, once said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room. The best way to market yourself is to build your brand”. It is therefore very important that you know who you are and what your bring to the table: that you know what’s in your ‘backpack’