He got out of his difficult start at the mavo, went through the havo and eventually belonged to the excellent students of the vwo. Now, acclaimed as one of the best teachers at AthenaStudies, he is pursuing his law studies with ease and has started as an emerging prominent lawyer. Life smiles on 24-year-old Santiago Angel Varela Dieguez, but it hasn’t always been that way. Stricken by bullying and paralyzing fear of failure, fueled by the disbelief of his teachers, the Heemskerker rarely speaks of it. “I am not a victim. My experiences have fueled my fighting spirit and that has brought me a lot.”
NH News / Loïs Iglesias
The 24-year-old Heemskerker appears as a cheerful young man, confident, funny, outgoing and positive. But these qualities have only blossomed in recent years, because before he was guided by “pleasing” and hid himself. “As a child I was quiet and introverted. I didn’t really feel at home anywhere. School didn’t have my full attention, other things played a role. I really did my best, but I noticed that the teachers had no confidence in me. “
Despite this, he did well at school, but his immense fear of failure had a negative influence on the ‘performance measurements’, such as the Cito test and the entrance test. “Teachers made everything depend on those tests and they wanted to send me to pre-vocational secondary education. My self-confidence was completely gone and I blame them.”
“You have to let a child develop as much as possible, whether that’s theoretical or practical”
Santiago Angel Varela Dieguez
Santiago lacked the guidance he needed. “In general, I believe that if you give a child guidance and self-confidence, they will progress much further, instead of just making them insecure. You have to let a child develop as much as possible, whether that be theoretical or practical.”
Difficult time
Because of his mother’s efforts, he was allowed to go to secondary school, which was a rotten time. “The people weren’t my people, they weren’t open-minded and I was always just pleasing to be liked.”
It went from bad to worse. He was bullied because of his sexual orientation and did not feel comfortable at school. “Eventually help arrived. It just kept going on at a micro level.”
‘you can do this’
His grades in secondary school were not particularly good and Santiago had no clear plan for the future. “On the last day I quickly registered for a course. But my mother said: ‘Go to HAVO, you can do that’. I didn’t have self-confidence then, so I didn’t believe I could handle it.”
“In the end I did high school because my parents thought: you can do this. I thought: okay, at least I trust my parents and not myself for a while. And then I tried it, and it went fantastic. At that moment I thought: If this works, then it will also work for VWO.”
Self confidence
A switch flipped, says Santiago. After four weeks at havo, he went to the school management to tell them that he wanted to go to vwo. “I spoke to my mentor at the time about this. He said: we are going to arrange it. She really got me through it.”
It turned out to be the words that gave Santiago a push. “She gave me the confidence I needed and never had from a teacher before.”
“My mentor gave me the confidence I needed and never had before”
Santiago Angel Varela Dieguez
However, his start at secondary school did not go smoothly. “In the first week at HAVO I was bullied, but that was well anticipated. VWO was a good time. I was with straight boys who just acted normal. Only they didn’t want me with a gay on their football team, but I made a beautiful panna with one of them. Well, I was in the selection,” he says laughing. “But those are just prejudices. Now I think: underestimate me. I’ll be back.”
After HAVO he moved on to VWO and with a little extra support for mathematics he completed the years with excellent results. “I passed my final exam cum laude.”
law school
After high school, Santiago started studying law. “It is a broad study, and it actually went very well. I like to follow rules. I have a big mouth, my heart on my sleeve and I like to stand up for people’s rights. That spicy aspect of my personality makes me feel attracted to Dutch law.”
“I have learned to stand up for myself and I also want to stand up for others who are not feeling well”
Santiago Angel Varela Dieguez
His Spanish temperament and his past certainly contribute to this, he says. “I’ve learned to stand up for myself and I also want to stand up for others. I used to be very introverted and now I really think: didn’t think so.”
Santiago has managed to turn his past into his strength. “I can now put things into perspective, know how to deal with situations and have developed my fighting spirit. So in the end it has given me a lot. Of course I would have preferred not to experience it, but it is the way it is.”
AthenaStudies
With his expertise in law, Santiago now helps others as a teacher at AthenaStudies. This company offers tutoring by top students to other students. “In high school I already tutored others, so I thought it would be fun to do.”
After his first trial lesson he was enthusiastic. “I was assessed with a 9.5, which is very high in that context. After that I gave many lessons at various universities, such as those of Leiden, Amsterdam and Groningen. I also taught courses that I had never had myself. I read I just got into it well and afterwards received text messages from students that they sent that they had passed.”
Future
The combination of teaching and motivating, which he does as a teacher, is what Santiago likes most about his work. And his efforts are rewarded: it was recently announced that he belongs to the top 1 percent of the more than 3,000 lecturers at AthenaStudies.
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Santiago Angel Varela Dieguez
Despite his love for teaching, he does not want to fully focus on it later on. “I want to keep doing it alongside other things. I think it would be interesting to teach at a higher level, for example at universities in working groups.”
The young man is certainly not done learning. “After my bachelor’s degree in law, I want to do a master’s degree, maybe even a double, and I want to work in Barcelona for half a year. Above all, I want to gain experience at the law firm where I am now doing my internship, and then I want to flame. I want to be myself develop fully and become the best lawyer there is. In the very future I want to set up my own law firm. I have already chosen the interior,” he says with a laugh.
2023-08-13 06:09:44
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