My Year in Review 2019

As 2019 has finished, I want to do a small summary of the main events that have shaped my living, both present and future, because it has really been a crazy intensive year and I didn’t have time to share my thoughts of all of them.

It all started at my home in Madrid, where I have been raised for all my childhood, studying for my mid-term unit exams. They were a lot of hours dedicated to interesting – but much probably useless – subjects. I failed 2 out of 8 (Electrotecnics/Circuit Analysis and Analogic Electronics).

Then, new subjects to learn started – the last of my Bachelor’s Degree! –, and a ‘TFG’ (thesis) was starting to get shape. But in the meantime, I had to decide what to do when the course finished. Start the ‘standard’ Master’s? Do a double one in Industrial Engineering + Automation? Apply to a Master in another University?

My definitive choice was to apply to a long internship abroad, where I could gain some experience in the real Engineering world, while substituting the missing Erasmus-like stage. And why not, give me a breath after the 4-year penitence in my engineering school, the Industrial Eng. School of Polytechnic Univ. of Madrid.

As a 3-year active member of the IAESTE delegation in my School (and previous president-delegate-coordinator), I had preference to choose one of the internships incoming from the Annual Exchange Conference in Cyprus, so I attended the ‘dealing' event held in Lleida to choose one of the experiences offered. That was an experience on itself, having fun with my friends for the whole weekend, and getting to know the hard way what means travelling low budget in a night bus while all the other people spent double in fancy high speed train.

‘Unfortunately’ (and I put it in quotes), none of the remaining available internships were long and suitable to spend my following year while being compatible with finishing my Degree. So I decided to pick one short enough to jam in my busy summer, in the best destination that people recommended for a short summer internship (aka paid holidays) with IAESTE: Istanbul. And they were right.

Then, I awaited for another longer, more technical internship, and I applied to one offered by NATO at its headquarters in Brussels, being selected as the Spanish candidate but finally discarded. You could think it was a big hit, but the IAESTE Exchange Coordinator referred my CV to the recruiters of a brand new IAESTE – Electrolux partnership, and after 5 different interviews I was finally accepted to have a 12-month internship in the factory and Manufacturing Engineering center located in Pordenone, near Venice. That would mean leaving my family, classmates, friends, student lifestyle… everything! But also on the other side, meeting new people, friends, workmates, boss,… Having my first official engineering job, moving to a new house for the first time ever, and living alone with its pros and cons!

In the meantime, I had to finish the courses, and pass the failed subjects. But it wouldn’t be complete without fighting for the 1st prize at Cybertech, the robotics competition organized by my university in which I had participated during the previous 3 years in different categories, but never winning the podium. And we achieved it! Refining the mechanics and structure from previous to be 3D printed, manufacturing the electronics PCB, and writing the code to handle the robot, and building it from scratch in a very limited time span, mainly by my teammates and robotics partners óscar and Héctor. And I want to thank them for their teamworking, it will be difficult to find workmates like them!

And suddenly, Popi, the Material Science (Siderurgy) professor – ruling the most difficult signature of the degree – , that already knew me from a SolidWorks course I offered 2 years before to get some funding for my IAESTE delegation, offered me to get involved in a restoration / historical memory project for the Watt Steam Machine that presides the hall of our Industrial Engineering School, and was the first ever steam machine to be used for industrial operations in Spain, as the motor for the coin stamps at the Royal Mint. And of course, I had to accept the invitation!

Not only was amazing to make the digital model of the machine to move and create an animation to show its guts, but to be part of a project that could persist longer than myself, if promoted enough and supported by the deanery. And the project had a great starting shot, being presented in a silly way by JM Burón the last day I was staying in campus, but well received by thousands of professors and students, both present and past, as the steam machine is the symbol of our School.

After all, I passed all my pending subjects (also the failed ones), and finished the mechanics of my Final Project – a humanoid bust with 2 arms to be mounted onto a tank to create a centaur for search and rescue operations –, leaving only the programming and simulation to be done remote from Italy (still working on it).

Afterwards, I did an express visit to my Scout group summer camp during my last weekend in Spain, remembering the old times when I was part of it (first as child enjoying and then as scouter/monitor for 3 years before leaving to finish properly my degree), and enjoying a nice weekend with children, colleagues and also parents who missed me and made me miss it too.

And then, I flew to Istanbul to stay for 1 month as an intern in a tech/cloud service startup based at the Istanbul Technical University startup incubator. It was an amazing experience in all aspects: meeting great new friends from all around the world (such as Belarus, Germany, Nepal, China, Kazakhstan, Chile, Vietnam, Poland, Ecuador, and many more!), having fun at the rich, neversleeping city of Constantinople, enjoying the mix of cultures, and getting some inspiration in entrepreneurship and management of the small team and business of KaizenTech.

And finally, after an express visit to Madrid to repack all the luggage, it was time to leave home towards Pordenone, Italy, for the following 12 months - or more! The internship wasn't standalone but integrated into a whole experience, the Electrolux Global Engineer Program, designed to join their interns and organize motivational activities and networking events.

The welcome by my landlord was excellent, the house was in ideal conditions, the paperwork took me just a couple of days (probably because I spoke Italian and even if I was a foreigner all the officers were very helpful), and my colleagues (mainly other GEP interns) received me as one of them, my Argentinian workmate was also my neighbor and near friend, and both my German manager and Spanish boss gave me a lot of freedom to develop myself into the innovation, creativity-based position that I was offered. Now I have an amazing workspace to develop collaborative robot applications, test game-changing automation innovative solutions, and perform demos to empower other engineers and project managers to implement cobot features in their manufacturing processes. I couldn’t ask anything else for my first real engineering job!

As a bonus, my last 3D printing service project – model design and printing of prototypes - I offered with Darz Beider (my custom hand-built 3D printer I left at home in Madrid) to Nuria Olivier Pascual, an ophthalmologist based in the north of Spain, received an award for being one of the best ideas of 2019 in Spain for improving the medical assistance, given by one of the main medical magazines in the country, to our lens holder for smartphone retinology. The prize was the proudness of being part of an open-source project (you can find the model in Thingiverse), and having the opportunity to provide my skills to democratize basic medical assistance, as the prototypes have already being used to diagnose retinal diseases both in Spain and in Chad!

And to finish the year the best way possible, my parents came to Italy and we had a 3-stage holiday, first in Messina, Sicily where my father was born and my aunt lives, then trekking and doing tourism in the amazing Cinque Terre in the Italian Riviera, and finally going to the Alps for New Year’s Eve with family friends, where I took stunning drone videos and edited them with the assistance of a professional film producer.

Summarizing, what a unique year of changes and challenges!

I think it will be a good idea to do this from now on as my yearbook (replacing my nonexistent diary). I do it for myself to remember in the future the great things that happen in my life, but also to publicly thank everyone that made them possible :)