Throughout being in Spain, almost all of our experiences were outside of a classroom. These focused on real-life applications of engineering to cultural visits. There were some pretty obvious lessons I learned, such as how to say basic phrases in Spanish, or to always bring water when going somewhere in Spain, however I learned other less obvious lessons as well. These included planning, real-life connections, and research.
To begin, I realized that in life, there are many things that can be simply “played by ear”, but other situations call for more intricate planning. I really noticed this in Spain, as something as simple as going out to eat without the program was challenging. It was hard to find good places without looking before hand, and there were times where I wished I had researched more places to eat before. This was particularly hard with restaurant names all in Spanish, as well as translating menus. Lessons like this apply not just to eating out in another country, but basically with everything we did. All of the planning that Nora and Dr. Borovetz (the leads of our program) did was so impressive and was clearly done so far in advance for it all to work so smoothly. This lesson may seem a little obvious, but for me it was something that will stick from seeing it play out in real life. Especially for traveling.
We did plenty of visits to hospitals, companies, and the engineering school, and a very common ground between all of them was research. Everyone at Pitt always talks about research, and they say to get involved, but I had yet to see anything in person. This is definitely something I should have taken more initiative on, but I really did not know what it actually was or where to start. Having so many presentations on research made it clear what the possibilities were. We saw new devices being designed for stroke patients, and so many other devices to help people. The one that stuck with me the most was Oreka, which is a moving platform that finds stroke patients center of pressure at different points. This would allow for more efficient treatment afterwards. To this point, I have not seen an application of engineering like this at Pitt, and it was very inspiring to see. It is clear that all the hard work in classes will allow for us to do research like this. For this reason, research is something I am going to get involved in at Pitt this next year.
We also had the opportunity to meet the people doing this research and have valuable conversations with them. While at Pitt, we have been encouraged to use LinkedIn, but for me this has done very little. In person conversations with people have made me realize that is how valuable connections are made. This can lead to future job opportunities, as I now have the contact information of people in the Bilbao School of Engineering that I believe would be happy to help me. This could include getting a co-op at a company we visited, called Tekniker, or going to study there for a semester. It is clear that knowing people, even if they do not remember me, can very much help me in the future. This has definitely been emphasized to me before, but I have never seen it in practice until this trip.
Therefore, all of these lessons will help in my career and outside of it. These are all things that I would have not learned in a classroom, and that I had to see in real life. For this reason, I am very grateful to have gone on this trip and to have had the opportunity to learn these lessons.
