TRAIN is the Training Committee of GEWIS. We organize trainings and lectures about all kinds of subjects. We aim to give GEWIS members a base of skills they can use in their studies as well as their future career. At TRAIN we use two axis to subdivide training topics. The first axis is labeled “Hard skill – Soft skill”. A hard skill is often a complex ability which you can learn by practice and repetition, an example of this would be the ability to write code in a certain language. A soft skill is more abstract than that. Soft skills are used during social interactions and every human has some level of proficiency in any soft skill, but it can sometimes be very difficult to get better at that skill and trainings about soft skills have a tendency to get ‘vague’. For example presenting is a soft skill. The second axis is labeled “Personal – Professional”. Personal skills can improve your live, but won’t directly contribute to a better career, for example: dealing with stress. Attending a training about this topic is very useful for your daily life as well as your career, but you won’t put it on your CV. A professional skill though, can be directly applied to your career. An example of this would be salary negotiations. These two axis allow us to put every training into one of four quadrants, ranging from personal soft skills to professional hard skills. At TRAIN we always try to organize trainings from all quadrants.
At TRAIN we are always looking for creative ways to present ourselves. We are looking for surprising and sometimes odd ways to promote activities. Also we try to learn from our own trainings too. Sometimes we stand-up during meetings to make sure they’re effective and we evaluate our work every once in a while during one of our infamous TRAINSTORMS. TRAIN was formed from a first year committee who decided in 2017 to organize an Adruino training (personal hard skill). To further that creative process we are always looking for enthusiastic second years to join our committee and we also try to organize an activity with the FYC’s each year. Please feel free to let us know if you have any ideas for trainings or if you want to join one of our meetings.
Choo Choo
TRAIN