- Can you tell us about yourself? (Who you are and what you study)
My name is Diogo and I’m a 19 years old Computer Science bachelor student in Porto Polytechnic.
I like computers (or else I wouldn’t be studying computer science hehe), IOT and travelling, I’ve never met a country I don’t want to visit.
- How did you discover this opportunity of Mobility through ATHENA?
I found this opportunity in my school email, what I found is that the majority of the students (at least the ones I’ve talked to) only use their email to check their grades and/or talk to their professors and are unaware of the opportunity’s the university gives them to explore new cultures and participate in interesting projects that will give them not only soft but sometimes even hard skills that will probably be very useful in the future.
- What were the main goals of your visit to the Receiving University?
Before arriving at the receiving university my group had already decided in doing an Air Quality Sensor and that was our main goal, individually, the reason I applied was mainly because of the 3D printing and modelling workshops, it’s something that I wanted to learn for a long time but never did.
- Did your mobility have a virtual and physical part?
Dates of physical mobility: 30 January to 3 February 2023
Dates of virtual mobility: 23 January to 27 January 2023
- What did you think of the physical mobility part of the mobility?
The physical mobility was absolutely amazing, it was snowing the entire week and for someone that lives in a town where it has snowed like 3 times since It’s existence (and none since I was born) even the trip from the hotel to the university is beautiful.
In the Physical part of the mobility, you will mainly apply the concepts and skills you learned in the workshops (I also had a couple of workshops in the physical part).
- What has your experience been like?
My experience was really good, the only problem was the lack of direct flights from Portugal to Lithuania but that’s not something on anyone’s control, I would also like the university to choose more diverse groups next time, I understand the reason why they didn’t want to mix a lot of cultures together, there’s some cultures that might be incompatible together but I like to think that if you’ve applied to a mobility like this then you need to expect to meet new cultures, in this case we only got to really meet the other people in the second or third day of the physical mobility.
- What do you think of this new type of mobility (virtual and physical periods)?
I like it, for the students the virtual mobility is totally free and the physical mobility is also close to that (we had help from the university to cover most of the expenses), we still get the chance to meet new cultures and countries while learning useful skills and the universities can offer much more experiences like this.
- What were the most exciting moments of your visit? Would you recommend Receiving University to your fellow comrades?
There were a lot of exciting moments in my visit, when the first code we wrote for the prototype worked, when we first saw our 3D case for the prototype, when we finished the soldering (although that might have been relief and not excitement, I’m really not that good at soldering haha) or when we turned on our finished prototype for the first time and it worked but if I had to choose the most exciting moment of my visit would be my visit to a local cat café, I’ve never been into a cat café and it was a cool experience, all thanks to my Italian friend Lucca!
- Did your experience differ from the expectations you had of this visit?
The only expectation I had for this visit was that it would be awesome, and my expectations were met.
