Fabrizio – I got enriched professionally and I worked in a stimulating context
A Story by Fabrizio, an Italian architect
Country of Origin: Italy
Destination: Prague (Czech Republic)
(Story collected by Vuste Envis)
My job experience in the LLLP has been really profitable and gave to me the unique chance to live for few months in a foreign working context. I had the opportunity to see, as architect, other ways to conceive architecture, opening my mind about different approaches. I’ve been host in a top notch Czech Architecture Studio, sitting side by side to people I’ve really admired for their skills, feeling enriched only by looking at them.
The adaptation in the studio has been not easy but neither difficult. People were not really talkative in English, in that way is difficult to find your space in a so well-oiled machine having only few months available. On the other hand, people have always been really nice and patient. On top of that, Petr (my boss, my tutor, studio associate and good Italian speaker) has always been incredibly available and easy-going with me.
The placement was absolutely relevant to my education, is actually what all the newly graduates from universities like mine dreams about. Despite this, the placement was not relevant to my previous working experiences. So, if is true that I didn’t get to specialise myself more in what I was used to do, I had however the great opportunity to enlarge my horizons and be professionally more complete.
About learning new things, I was aware since the beginning that being a “training on the job” internship, no one would have stop his work to teach me new things and no one would have asked me something that would have required abilities I didn’t already had. I however got to work on building models, using software that I was not using since a while and become faster using the ones I currently use.
I didn’t find the job too stressful. The working hours were flexible and however not more than 8 a day for both, interns and employees. Only one week-end has been necessary to work until late, but I did it with real pleasure, made me feel more part of the team. I took it as an honour.
The conditions in my job didn’t allow me to be about as productive as I could be. I’ve never been invited to the meetings where the team was discussing about some projects I was working on too, so I could not get the bosses indications and I had just to do what my colleagues told me to do. Then I had to bring my laptop for work, so of course I could not be as fast as I would have like to be.
All in all I can say I am really satisfied of this working experience. I got enriched professionally, I worked in a stimulating context, I realised my strengths and my weakness. I’m just a little disappointed about the boss’s frequent allusions about the possibility to stay in the studio and then realize that it was just a way to motivate you to do more and more.
I really hope this internship made me more employable abroad. I’m actually searching for a job in Czech Republic, but it still seems that Czech language is a requirement that an achieved Leonardo internship and a “Europass Mobility certification” cannot cover.
