General information.

My name is Amy Beaulisch. Officially I'm from Brugge , Belgium. But for the Fab academy I moved to Vestmannaeyjar , Iceland for 4 months. I was born in april in 1993. If you want to contact me, you can always email me at amy.beaulisch@gmail.com

me

Studies.

I graduated in Arts and Humanities in secondary school in Belgium. The curriculum included psychology, art, moviemaking, architecture, anthropology... We also got natural science courses like geography and mathematics, and languages (English, French, Dutch and German).

After secondary school I decided to study abroad for a year (school year 2011 - 2012). AFS guided me through the entire experience and sent me to Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland. There I went to the secondary school, and one of my courses was Fablab.

In the sumer of 2012 I moved back to Belgium, because my AFS year only took 10 months, and I started a teacher education for history and geography. Normally I will be teaching children between 12 and 16 years old. However, because I got the chance to join Fab Academy in Vestmannaeyar, I decided to pause my studies in Belgium and come to Iceland. To do this, I had to give up my first year in the teacher education in Belgium, so I hope Fab Academy will be as enriching and interesting as I thought.

My long term perspective is still somewhat unclear. On one hand I might return to Belgium and pick up my teacher education where I left off, but on the other hand there is also the option of studying Industrial product design (which is pretty much the 3 year version of what we are doing now)

Leaving home behind for an extended period of time is not an easy thing for a 19 year old girl and it requires a fair amount of flexibility, but I like it.

Hobbies

My hobbies back in Belgium are sailing and medieval sword fighting. In due time I would also like to become part of the Belgian Red Cross. Another interest of mine are history and geography.

Why did I sign up for the Fab Academy?

While I was taking the teacher education in Belgium, I got an offer to join the Fab Academy. During my first experience with Fablab in 2012, I really loved it to make small personal things. Not really advanced stuff, but just fun. I also loved it to help in the lab during the summer for a project here in Vestmannaeyjar. Because of that I gained some skills in using the Shopbot. With these experiences behind me, it seemed like a good idea for me to go back to Iceland and just study in Fablab on a higher level. I know it won't be easy because in the end I just got a few classes in Fablab, a part of the summer on one machine and no substantial technical knowledge. So here we go, up for a new adventure in a completely different field of study than what my friends and family would have expected.

As a child I just loved it to fabricate things, and Fablab seems to release the child in me once again, or rather, it seems to stimulate that same creativity. A teacher of mine once said that the (Belgian) school system nowadays is developed to kill creativity. To make people draw inside the lines instead of making a drawing. He said that in the field of study I took (Arts and Humanities), they still tried to keep our creativity alive. I tend to disagree, because we always needed to follow a plan, and could never work out our own ideas. That's exactly what is possible in Fablab, and in Fablab you can just do it on a professional way.