AI* of the month November: Inessa Ketelaars!
Mon, 19 Dec 2022
written by Peter Berentsen
Hellooooo, Congratulations on becoming the AI* of November, How do you feel?
Thankyou! I am very excited and surprised, because I did not see this coming at all. But I am super honoured to be an AI* this year.
Could you first introduce yourself to us?
Yesss, I am Inessa, I am 20 years old. I am now in my third year of the bachelor and probably last but I don’t know yet for sure. I am from Eindhoven but I live in Nijmegen now, and I totally fell in love with the city and do not wanna leave anymore. My hobbies include survival running, taking care of my plants, and making music.
I know you are quite the plant enthousiast, how many plants do you own and which one is your favorite?
BIG GASP Well I actually counted them last week, and as of now I have 26 plants. When I started living in Nijmegen in my own room I had like 3 tiny plants, and they were really really tiny, but now they are like super big and they grew so much and they’re still doing so well. So I am most proud of them, also because they’re still thriving and they’re so big and doing so well. (Inessa couldn’t stress this enough :P)
You also mentioned survival running, how did you get to such an unusual sports?
Well, when I was in my first year of high school, my brother needed a sport to get rid of all his energy. A colleague of my father did survival running and my sister thought it would be fun too, so we decided to do a practice training with the family. Then my sister, father and I thought it was very fun and decided to keep doing this, however, my brother and mother were like nope. So even tho it was initially meant for my brother, my father, sister and I ended up doing it for quite some years. Sadly, I had an injury for 3 years so I had to stop, but now I have started doing it again which is very very nice.
How did you get to studying AI?
I didn’t really know what studies I wanted to do, I had many interests but not 1 big winner. At some point I went to an AI talk on the open day with my sister and I was quite overwhelmed with all the talks at the end. And my sister and I were talking about it and then she said: hey, isn’t AI perfect for you, it is very broad and still kinda beta. And that really made me think and eventually got me here.
You also said you might not be finishing your bachelors this year, are you not certain if you will be able to get your EC’s this year or is there something more to it?
Uhhh, no I think I can get all my EC’s this year, but I’m not sure what I wanna do next year. I’m either starting my masters or I’ll take a gap year, and if that’s the case I may just do some courses next year and chill a bit.
Have you already thought about what master you’d like to do?
Yesssss, I think, I think, I think I wanna do the 2-year educational computer science teacher master, but I don’t know the actual English name. But I think I wanna become a teacher in high school.
What else do you do besides university life and CognAC?
I have played piano for many years, but sadly I don’t have a keyboard in my room in Nijmegen. I do, however, have a guitar which I am trying to teach myself to play. I am also trying to make my own blanket with crochet, I started before the summer and it went very well, but when I was at 1/4th my life got really busy so I haven’t had too much time for it. Hopefully I can finish it somewhere in next year. And I like just anything creative in general, painting, drawing.
So you’ve started of your CognAC career in the 1C and have now joined several others. Do you have a favorite committee?
Ohhhh, I really liked the 1C because in my year everything was online so it was a bit different. In the end we were only with 4 but some of them are still some of my best friends. The meetings were a lot of fun because we did not have that much to do and ended up playing a lot of skribbl.io. So that was a really great first impression of committees. Now I’m in the WKC, even though I thought I did not like organizing stuff. But then the weekend came along and I had so much fun organizing and working together with my AMAZING committee members. It was sooooo nice and I really wanna do it again next year.
How did you actually end up becoming active in CognAC?
In my first year, I joined the 1C but not many activities because everything was online. Because our intro week was online I decided I’d become an intro mentor, and then everything started rolling because I met you and all the other active CognAC people and everyone was so nice and it was so much fun. I remember at the intro that someone said oohh there is an after party at Spence’s or at Micha’s and I was like but who are those people as I had never talked to them before, and now they’re both very good friends of mine.
Yeah, that sounds familiar. I actually also invited 30 people I didn’t know into my house that introweek. I’m pretty sure that’s where we officially first became friends ;)
That’s also why I know that you love to watch movies, but I’m still not entirely sure which one your favorite is…
Well, that’s hard. It kinda also depends on what mood i’m in. I really love Disney, as I think most people know, especially the songs. (inessa struggling to choose a favorite)
You can also make a top 5 if you want?
Yeah but I still think it will not fit in a top 5. Okay in no particular order. I really like Mamma Mia because I always watched it with my dad because he enjoys movies with songs in it. So I watched it a lot growing up which was nice. I also really like Tangled from Disney and all other Disney movies. I also like the cliché christmas movies, I’m always very excited when they reappear on netflix. And not a movie, but I really like the series Friends. I think I watched it like 8 times now? It really is my comfort series haha.
I know you love frikandellen but apart from that, what is your favorite recipe to cook/eat?
That also kinda depends, right now I really like a recipe I got from Spence with red pesto and mascarpone. I do enjoy making pasta’s in general because they’re tasty.
Besides Disney songs, what is your favorite song/music genre?
Hahahaha I want Disney!!!! Besides that I guess just pop music, and sing a long songs are ofcourse very fun.
What is your life motto?
WE DELIVER!
What does that mean?
Jesse will know what that means ;P
Okay well if you don’t want to spill that tea, maybe you wanna spill the tea about who tkbinessa is?
Hahahahaha okay then. This year I went to 'zomerfeesten' with my roommates, which was really fun. And I had quite something to drink haha. So the more I drank to more I wanted to out my love to my friends. I think I texted Carmen like 4 times that night like "Carmen I love you sooo much let's meet at tkb!!". So Carmen was like "Love you too! We are at tkb, see you soon!" Then, because I was drunk I had no time awareness, I finally showed up around 2 hours later at tkb. Quite some people already went home cause it was quite late, but I was suuuuuper happy to finally see my friends and told them again like ahhh love you guys!! Then the next day I had one of the worst hangovers of my life hahaha. But the night was totally worth it. And so that night tkbinessa was birthed. And then later on my birthday Carmen had a present for me for which I had to check my email, and she actually made an alias, namely tkbinessa@svcognac.nl, so if you ever want to go out send me an email and tkbinessa will join.
We are coming to an end, do you have any shoutouts?
Yeeeeees, shoutout to you, the board, I love you guys, I am so happy to be studying AI while you are the board. (Peter starts to blush) Shoutout to the original 1C, back in the dayyyy. And shoutout to Jesse for when we’ll make a podcast (Is this related to her life moto: we deliver??? Go ask Inessa). And shoutout to the WKC and AC ofcourse for being 2 amazing and super ‘gezellige’ committees.
Okay and 1 last question: What do you think is your biggest achievement in life so far. (besides becoming AI* ofcourse)
Well, it’s not like my biggest achievement but I am really proud, I had like an injury in my leg for 3 years and I couldn’t play sports, go out or walk at all at some times. But now I can finally plays sports again, go out until 5 AM. So I am really proud that all that is going so well because it’s been such a struggle. And in general I am just proud to be where I am in in live.
Thankyou for the interview Inessaaaaaa