When reading the title every self-respecting physicist immediately thinks of the wave-particle duality that is used to describe elementary particles like electrons. Whether this is a useful description or not is not important for now (Although I would like to point out that if every particle shows wave and particle behavior, that is apparently just particle behavior).

In the 'real world', that you applied physicists love so much, there are also some interesting cases of duality. For example while studying for your exams: (almost) nobody likes the act of studying itself, but all of us really want to know more about the subjects that we are studying or else we wouldn't be here. Do you see the conflict?

While the previously described duality is pretty often thought (and complained) about, another duality, which I would like to call the 'student-duality', is mostly ignored by students. This student-duality is best described by the weird tendency that students have of wanting to be taken seriously but at the same time drink liters of beer. First of all I would like to say that I am definitely in this weirdly prepared state myself, so I am not trying to harm anyone's image. I want you all to think about how completely bizarre our current situation is. Never in our life we are going to be able to drink however much we want on one day and speak with some important delegation of a company on the next. In contrary to how we think about this phenomenon, the rest of the society does think it's a little weird. Try to think about that when you open your next Gebouw 13!

So what happens with our lifestyle when we start with a job after our study. Except for some eternal sjaars most of us will probably leave the student life within about 5 years. Then it is time for withdrawal, for some this will be harder than for others. While I think I can handle it with ease, as I am a bit of a laffe drinker, some of you will definitely have trouble acclimatizing to the 'real life'. Can you even do physics or mathematics without having your daily alcohol consumption?

I want to start this post with wishing you all a happy new year, take care of yourself and for others around you!