Intake form: Mentor system HMS

Name of the student: Stijn van den Berkmortel

Name of the mentor: Jorn Trommelen
Date of the meeting: 3-10-2023

PERSONAL INFORMATION:

Country: Netherlands
Previous eduction: Health sciences
Previous University/Institute: Maastricht university
E-mail address: s.vandenberkmortel@student.maastrichtuniversity.nl
Telephone number (not obligatory):

QUESTIONS ABOUT BACKGROUND AND PLANS:

Below are several items to be discussed in the first mentor meeting. Please prepare for
this meeting by answering these questions and provide some detail, i.e., 2-4 sentences
for each answer. Think not only about ‘content’ and ‘academic knowledge’, but also more
general in terms of academic skills (e.g. English language, methodological/statistical
difficulties, presenting, etc), as well as potential personal issues that you would like to
work on (e.g. being shy in a group, difficulty listening to other people’s opinions, etc).
Don’t be afraid to think ahead, also beyond this 1-yr MSc program. Where do you want
to end up 5 yr from now? What competencies do you need to develop to get there, and
which part of that can you work on during this program?

1. Summary of experiences in the field of HMS:

The courses so far are right up my alley. I have always really liked biology of the human
body. Especially how the body functions during sports activities and even more so how it
functions at the highest levels of intensity or the differences between untrained and
trained/elite athletes is very interesting to me.

2. Summary of reason(s) to attend this HMS program:

I personally am very intrigued by the HMS field. In my personal life I enjoy bodybuilding
and strength training and how the body works biologically and on a cellular level.
I therefore find it very interesting to learn about all the subjects during the HMS course.

3. Topics from this program which you are very interested in:

I personally am most interested in strength training. So a course regarding muscle

building and strength gain would be a dream to me. But I like the course of supplements
en energy systems so far a lot too.

4. Which skills/competences do you have that will help you in this program?
I feel like I have a good basis regarding my knowledge on current subjects and also I can
read papers and understand academic language quite easy. My peers from tutorial
groups seem to struggle quite a bit with understanding the literature, while I find it all
very understandable. Im also quite comfortable with speaking up in groups and asking
questions in groups. Before doing health sciences I did a course on HBO level so I also
have quite a lot of experience in group work.

5. Which skills/competences would you like to improve during this program?

I mainly want to further work on my academic writing skills and competences regarding
doing research. We didn’t do much on independent research skills. During my thesis
internship I did get to know it a bit the thesis period was only 8 weeks. So I didn’t really
get to go deep into my own research at all.

6. Do you already have specific goals/plans after finishing this program?

Im not really sure on what I want to do professionally after this course. So that’s one
thing I would want to talk about and maybe get some guidance in if that would be
possible.

7. What worries you when thinking about studying in this program?

The only thing I can think of is that the the actual classes that provide new knowledge
are only half a year long. I would maybe even want to learn more about these kind of
subjects.

Actions/personal goals agreed upon during first meeting:

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