【IVY CLOSER PoFP】My Adventure

I come from a very small country village in the north-east of Spain. My parents are from there and most of my family has lived in the surroundings for different generations now. My childhood was a very happy one surrounded by friends and family but there was something that I wanted to do since a very small age, this thing was to travel the world. No one in my family, except the coolest of my aunts, had ever lived abroad or speaks another language except Catalan (our regional language) and Spanish (the language spoken by all Spanish).
I wanted to be like my aunt. She moved from our village to Barcelona (the second biggest city in Spain) to study journalism, from there to London to learn English, then to San Francisco for three years, and finally to France where she has created a family and happily lives in the countryside with her French husband and two kids.
So, after excelling in my high school studies, I decided to leave my village and move to Barcelona to star my own adventure around the world. It was my first time living in a big city and things as simple as using the elevator or taking the metro were pretty new for me. Also, not knowing who my neighbors were or how bad tomatoes and meat tasted compared to what I was used in my village were things that I did not like but I quickly got used to.
I did not chose journalism, like my aunt, but Mathematics that I considered to be the most challenging subject. Indeed, it turned out to be harder than I expected. I was used to achieve the best grades in high school and when I got there and I failed my first exam I quickly realized I would have to work really hard there. And so, this is what I did... In Spain, university degrees are very specific and from the first year you are exposed to all sorts of courses from your major, which you have to select before starting the university. Actually, there is no such thing as minors or double majors, and the student needs to be pretty sure about what topic to select from the beginning since the degree is mainly about that topic. In my case, I believe that I selected well since I liked Mathematics enough to be able to devote all my time to this area for five years of my life. During this time I was exposed to all sorts of courses such as Complex Analysis, History of Mathematics, Geometry, Abstract Algebra, or Topology.
While keeping myself quite busy with my degree, my basketball team, and the small social life I had in the university, I continued dreaming about going abroad. However, the biggest obstacle was the money. Public Spanish universities are very cheap but despite this fact my parents had to support me fully since I did not have time to earn money with a part-time job. Due to this situation, I felt that I had no right to ask for extra money for vacations. Despite this, I managed to go to the UK, Ireland, France, and Hungary during my summer holidays spending very little amounts of money but still enjoying very much the fact of being exposed to different cultures. In Spain, there are no internships offered during summer to college students as it is in the US, so most of the students spend their summer time travelling, working for the family business (I spent some summers picking up fruits for my uncle), or studying for the September special exams in case they had failed the regular finals in December or June.
Besides traveling during summer with their own money, college students also have the opportunity to apply for the Erasmus scholarship. This scholarship enables European undergrad students to study at another European university for one or two semesters supporting the student with tuition, room, and board. This was a great opportunity for me and I jumped into it as soon as I got the chance. I got offered the fellowship for two semesters and that was the beginning of my adventure.
The idea was to go on Erasmus during my last year, when I would just have optative courses that are easier to be transferred and accepted as credit units by my home university. At the beginning, I did not care about where to go but I slowly arrived at the conclusion that going to Paris would be an interesting experience. It would give me the chance to learn a new language while living in one of the most amazing cities in the world.
Languages have never frightened me. I am bilingual, meaning that I can speak two languages as a native speaker (Catalan and Spanish). Thanks to this situation and the fact that learning languages in school has always been really boring for me, I have come to the conclusion that the best way to learn a language is to travel to a country that speaks that language and learn by getting immersed in their culture (watching TV, listening to the radio, reading any piece of paper that comes to my hands, etc.). This would be the case with the French that, on top of it, belongs to the same family of languages as the Catalan and Spanish (the romance family) and this would make understanding much easier from the beginning. After a one-month intensive course in French that would allow me to say and understand basic stuff, I arrived in Paris.
Once I settled down, I quickly adapted into the university, my classes, and the great food. The hardest for me was the cold temperatures and the high prices of everything (the price of a coffee or a dinner in a restaurant was almost twice the price I was used in Barcelona). I pursued courses in Optimization, Graph Theory, and Cryptography and I realized then that I liked Mathematics but not enough to continue studying its theoretical side towards a graduate degree. Overall, the experience of living abroad and alone for the first time permitted me to know myself better. I realized that the best of it was that I truly enjoyed learning all sorts of things in the university and also outside of it just by being exposed to new things. So, based on this experience and thinking of the future, I would make sure that I go abroad for a longer period and with my boyfriend (whom I left in Spain and I missed dearly during my whole stay in France).
For the next two years I would remain in Spain pursuing two masters, an Msc in Economics and an MEng in Logistics. However, I did not plan for it in advance at all. Back in Barcelona from Paris and without a fellowship, the main challenge popped up again: how would I finance myself after graduation? At that point I felt that I wanted to further study and explore the Economics field through a Masters but, at the same time, I was curious about going to industry and this would solve my financial problem. I applied for both options and I decided that if I got offered both I would go for the master as long as they offered me a teaching assistant position to cover all my expenses. I got accepted into a master with a TA position and I also was offered a job (both offers in Barcelona) but my decision was made, I went for the Msc.
The academic year passed so quickly that it was already Spring and I needed to figure out what to do with my life again. I knew I wanted to further study and, indeed, I got offered to continue towards the PhD in management in the same university I was pursuing my master. However, my boyfriend and me were discussing a much more exciting plan: what if we tried to do our PhDs in the US? Spanish PhD degrees were not really valued in the Spanish industry and in academia it would be really hard to obtain tenure since there is a lot of competition for very few spots. Moreover, we both wanted to travel the world and the US would be the perfect combination for our academic and personal dreams.
Hence, we started to strategically make movements towards this goal. My boyfriend would do a stay in a US university thanks to a collaboration with our Spanish university to finish his master's thesis. This way he would be able to publish and start connections in the US. In the meanwhile, I would pursue a second master totally offered in English with international professors that would be much more specific in the subject I was more passionate about: logistics. During that time we would both prepare for the TOEFL and the GRE to achieve our best grades. At the same time, we both applied to the most prestigious Spanish fellowship that it is awarded every year by the King of Spain to fifty students that want to pursue graduate studies in the US. If we got awarded this fellowship we would have money for our first two years in the US regardless of which university or program we would manage to get accepted into. That was the dreamed fellowship and would open our doors to the US. We decided not to tell any of our fellowship interviewers or our applications to US PhD programs that we were going together because we thought it would decrease our options. Instead, we wanted everyone to understand that we were applying to get the opportunity for ourselves, because we wanted to and not because our partner was also applying. We were lucky enough to share common passions because we both wanted to do a PhD and we both wanted to leave Spain for a long period.
At that point, there was no plan B for us because we did not consider how to go to the US without a fellowship. Surprisingly enough, we both got the fellowship. I could not even believe or realize how lucky we had been for some time. That made everything much more easy, since we were told that it was easier to get accepted if we could financially cover ourselves. At first, we were skeptical since for a month we would not hear from any university except one in the West Coast (where I was accepted) and one in Southern California (where my boyfriend was accepted). The wait was nerve-racking since we did not want to accept those programs that were not our first choice and would separate us 3000 miles. After some rejections and acceptances, I was accepted in my first choice at UC Berkeley and he was also accepted to his first choice at Stanford. This was the best outcome possible and I was very happy about it.
The first year as a graduate student in the US, was the hardest for me. The course load was really heavy and the expected performance level for the PhD student is really high. At the end of the first year, students can graduate with a master degree, which I never planned to obtain (three master degrees would be too much for my resume :)), or can try to pass the entry exam towards the PhD. The historically acceptance ratio for passing this exam was not really high, from 50% to 70%. So despite initially thinking that I was already accepted for a PhD, I had to overcome this last big challenge, to pass this three-day examination. I could not stop thinking that it would be terrible to not pass since for me obtaining a master had no value at that point. So, I started studying for that exam well in advance to be ready for it and this really paid off. I passed and the relief was huge. Now, I was in the PhD program and it was just a matter of time to get my PhD.
After two years, when my Spanish fellowship finished, I started being covered by my department (by teaching assistant positions) and my advisor (by research positions). Thus, now, by looking back in time, I can say that I have been able to remind in academia year by year since I left college without having to ask my family for economic help. This has not been an easy achievement because, unfortunately, graduate students are not fairly remunerated for the amount of work done.
Now that I can see the end of my PhD getting closer, I can start thinking of my future plans again. These plans can have the form of anything as long as it contains a combination of academic challenge, travel, the close company of my partner, and something else, which is to contribute to society. The summer after finishing our undergrad degrees, my boyfriend and I went to Brazil. He got offered an internship with a Brazilian telecom company and I would be accompanying him. We lived with a Brazilian family and I got the chance to volunteer as a teacher in a “favela” (slum). I was in charge of a group of children from 8 to 17 years old and I taught them Spanish and computer tools. Not only I was able to share my knowledge with them, but we also somehow could exchange our values and perspectives of life. This has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and since then I have been thinking about the best way of contributing to society employing my background.
Thanks to all I have done up to this point, I feel that I am ready now to make this substantial contribution to society. My long run career objective is to continue researching and teaching logistics inside the university combining this with other tasks such as teaching and consulting for institutions located in developing areas .
Most of the main decisions in my life have been taken due to my strong desire of learning and, in turn, I believe that the best way of learning is by getting exposed to other cultures. Thus, traveling around the world while keeping my professional career in good standing, has turned out to be the perfect combination to achieve my dreams. Now, looking back, I can say that I have truly followed my aunt's steps in my particular way.
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