Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya

It's been some days since Maciej asked me to write about my university. There were many reasons for that delay, but I think that one of the most important ones is that university is this respectful and bittersweet period of time where you get to make great friends by suffering together.

Let me put you in context. I went to the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya [1], to the Informatics Faculty of Barcelona [2] which is in Barcelona, the city where I was born and raised. I always knew I wanted to study Computer Science (or Informatics Engineering like it's called here), I've always been fascinated by computers; so much that I built some expectations around university, what I'd learn there and what I would be able to do when I graduate.

In any case, when the time to choose my university arrived, I must admit I didn't put that much effort in searching. For starters, Barcelona is a great place for studying. We have two big public universities for technical subjects: the UPC and the UAB (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona [5]). I preferred the FIB/UPC for two main reasons: it was the best ranked school for Informatics Engineering in Spain (and I think it still is) and it was orders of magnitude closer to where I lived. As always, a mix of semi-objective facts and practicalities. Another alternative appeared around those years called UPF (Universitat Pompeu Fabra [6]) which I hear that is growing quite fast, but I didn't pay much attention to back then; mainly because it seemed centered in less technical subjects. Additionally, it's worth mentioning that I'm talking about public universities (where the studies are partly paid by the government), we have some private ones too which I didn't really consider. That's because the advantages they always offered me were: requiring lower high school grades and further guidance while studying, opposed to the "you are on your own" perspective that the public schools offered, which was closer to what I was looking for. I hear it's not that much the case anymore. Now the so-called Bologna plan is applied, where students must go to class and do regular exercises, opposed to the "if you are going to pass the exam, you are good to go".

We tend to think that University will bring us the tool that will enable a bright future for us. After having gone through it, over time I've grown a different opinion. It's more like a path that leads you to your future. Courses at my faculty were good in my opinion, I can complain but I won't today, in the end I'm pretty sure I received what I was looking for. During my stay at the university, I got in touch with the most relevant fields in Computer Science, or the ones I was more interested in. Additionally, in most cases I had the occasion to dig further and see what I could do with what I learned. Additionally, one of the interesting things of being in a big campus is that it's easy to find the subject you're looking for, because you get to choose from a wide range of optional subjects. It's something I definitely think the FIB is good at.

Nevertheless it's not all about the subjects, it's about the experience you acquire. If I had to recommend something, this would be "don't limit yourself to the studies". Universities create an interesting atmosphere and I think it's a good idea to get involved. For example, one of the best experiences at University was the possibility to have a job in it, during a scholarship I took in an Applied Mathematics department. There I could work on a useful project, with differently skilled people who were expecting actual results from me. That's a big difference from the 4 month subjects where you'd dump all the work done once it was over.

Another interesting experience was Erasmus: it's a good opportunity to meet new awesome people and see different universities that might show you that yours might not be as bad as you would think, and trust me it's something you need after spending 3 or 4 years studying something. Luckily, Erasmus is not something mandatory, it's something that you might decide to do, or not. This gives yourself the freedom to think what you want to do and if you want to do it. It's a big decision and it has a lot of interesting questions, like where to go, what university to choose, what kind of subjects you want to do abroad, etc. Also it's a good opportunity to fly away from your parents place if you had not done it yet.

One of the things that differentiated me from most of my university colleagues was that I got involved in FOSS projects (KDE [4] to be precise). This has been a very important step in my career that also opened a lot of doors. Not only because I'm lucky enough to be working on what I'm passioned about, but because it put me working in big projects like KDevelop (an Integrated Development Environment) with demanding user bases, by doing what I like the most, with excellent colleagues that enjoy it too. That's very specific to community projects, people don't work on something in their free time if they don't love it. Furthermore, it's been really interesting to learn from such a big community like KDE, the fact that it's a community helps in getting to improve whatever you want to. For example in KDE I've not only worked on code, but also translation, documentation, management, oral presentations, events organization, I was part in the KDE Spain foundation, and more. Usually one of the best ways of learning how to do things is by doing them. Communities have a lot to offer this regard, given that the community grows exclusively with its participants implication, so a community will generally be open to any iniciative backed with the intention of pushing it, either if it's a new program or a new marketing campaign.

All in all, I'm happy about my University. The campus is big, there are other campuses nearby, there's plenty of great people and you can find things to do of any flavor. Barcelona is a big and concentrated city. I'm sure anybody can find his place here, either you like nature, party, computers or all of them.