On teaching
June is always a mess. I teach a big, intensive four-week course to more than 180 bachelor students. I’m not the sole bearer of the course, but I am the methodology developer, and I tutor 30 students spread across five teams.
It is one of those teaching seasons we half-jokingly call “soul-consuming.” And yet, once I’m immersed in it, I actually do enjoy it. It is very interesting to teach young bachelor students, especially in this course on redesign for the circular economy. To me, it’s a delicate balancing act: encouraging them to both trust their own ideas and challenge their own assumptions.
I don’t always succeed. But when I do (when they do), I can’t help but smile.
By the end of the course, they’re confidently navigating terms like “take-back programs,” “product life extension,” and "value retention strategies.” Sometimes, they even start to spot the cracks in their own solutions. They grapple with the frustration of imperfect answers and the uncomfortable truth that everything, eventually, has an End-of-Life that needs managing.
“But this product lasts 50 years!”
“Yes, that’s great!... and you’ll still need to deal with it in year 51.”
“We’ll just send it to the recycling facility.”
“Also a good idea! But the recycling facility isn’t a black hole. What will happen inside it? What will happen after it?”
They struggle beautifully with these questions. As if the house (of linearity) always wins.
It’s bittersweet. They see the potential of simple, clever improvements, and at the same time, they begin to realize just how hard it is to make anything fully circular. If I could leave even the smallest mark in those brilliant young minds, it would be this: the desire to lean into complexity. To acknowledge it. To respect it. To work with and within it.
This year marked the fifth iteration of the course. I started five years ago with the goal of convincing them that circularity has value. But these days, I find myself getting the most joy from watching them convince themselves. Not just that circularity matters, but that they have a role in shaping it. Even if it’s messy. Even if it’s incomplete.
Especially then.
As June comes to an end, and I say goodbye to the fifth generation of students who have completed this course, and who are most likely just happy to have their summer break, I feel compelled to make this stop, here, with this note. A small pause to mark a cycle closing, and maybe another one beginning.
This is one of my first posts on this website. I don’t know exactly what shape this space will take yet. But I do know that I want to use it to hold moments like this; messy, meaningful, full of questions.
Just like research itself.
P.S. If you are interested in exploring, using or teaching this methodology, we published a paper with an attached handbook. You can see it open access here
