An Italian student working with Brazilians, in Portugal
Não falo português, and to be honest at first I wasn’t even liking Portuguese, but in the end I came back to Italy with a huge desire to learn that language. There aren’t many reasons behind it, just the fact that my experience in Portugal was great, but short… so what better way to make it continue?
My internship at tog.design started the 6th of January and ended after exactly 2 months. I’m a Service Design student at the University of Bologna (Italy) and I applied for the Erasmus+ for Traineeship program in April 2019, when I started contacting every service design office in Lisbon and Berlin. Berlin went off pretty soon (it looks like german language is still a priority 🤭) and Lisbon also wasn’t giving me decent results until I finally got in touch with the right one.
Was it the right choice?
I will not talk about what tools I learned to use or other stuff of this kind. I want to share the best insights of doing this internship abroad, and I’ll resume them in 3 main points:
- Comfort zone
- Smart working
- Going back
Comfort zone (getting out of it)
Leaving what you care the most for something that you don’t know is always the biggest challenge and this time I realised that it should be done once in a while, but never forget about what you temporarily left!
This attitude is even more meaningful for a designer: at tog I learned to think about things on my own and be convinced, but always confront with others and eventually change perspective or discuss my own convictions. As a designer you will never have the truth and dealing with a team from the other side of the world, with different culture and background, makes that even more evident.
As a designer you will never have the truth and dealing with a team from the other side of the world, with different culture and background, makes that even more evident.
Smart working
Not intended as working from home, but working in a dynamic environment with colleagues at a distance of 8,495 km. Everyday in the morning everyone writes her/his activities in a messaging platform, and eventually asks for help or states her/himself as “free”. I’ve seen this kind of practice as something easy to do and powerful at the same time: you really feel part of a group with shared interests and somehow pushes you to achieve the goals that you set for yourself. It’s not obvious for every work environment and it’s not present at all at the University, where teams are most of the time “left to themselves”, without coordination or proactivity.
Going back
Just like leaving, going back is also very difficult. The last two weeks in Lisbon have been not so easy: I tried to close my last tasks, moved from an airbnb to another, dealt with the recent pain of coronavirus and had an all-you-can-eat in a Churrascaria with my mind only thinking: and now?
Now I’m back to Bologna; I know something more about teamwork and how to deal with real clients, I’ve a more fluent english and a desire of learning Portuguese, I know how my job is perceived in two more countries besides Italy and last but not least I know the taste of heavenly desserts (i.e. Pão de Deus).
So… Was it the right choice? Definitely yes!
Thanks to everybody at tog, and special thanks to Rafael Daron, who demonstrated interest in my internship since the first moment and kindly accompanied me on my journey.
