Hey Guys,

Today, I’m going to tell you about my three-year bachelor’s degree journey. In 2015, I started the Industrial Management and Logistics programme at ISCTE Business School. It seemed to be the perfect option because the last semester involved doing an internship, which was practical.

In terms of classes, the first year was quite similar to a general management course, which for me makes complete sense, because before starting specialising, you get an overview of basic key terms, concepts and strategies. My favourite module was probably financial accounting; I love working with numbers. 

During the first year, ISCTE offers students several options for anyone who wants to do a three-week summer school outside of Portugal. And one thing my parents always told me, was that having different experiences abroad was very important, not only to get outside of your comfort zone but also because it will be an advantage for the future. So, as soon as I hear about the programme, I applied to Ljubljana University of Economic to take a course about Negotiation Techniques.

Ljubljana was my first experience abroad! It was the first time I was going to live alone in a completely new environment. If you knew me well, you would understand the first reaction I had, which was precisely the same for every experience. But, essentially, a few days before departing I told my parents I actually didn’t want to go… cleary that wasn’t an option and I went anyways! I think it’s normal, it’s the fear and excitement kicking in at the same time…

Either way, it was an excellent experience; I loved it! I got to know new people, not from a lot of different cultures. Because the majority of students there were Portuguese from Porto. The module I took was super exciting, and I learned a lot of techniques that I still use today. In the end, I finished with an outstanding grade and new friends.

The second-year was a little bit more focused on logistics, but I still had a lot of management focused classes. During this year, nothing exciting happened, to be honest, just those stupid teenage stuff… but those aren’t important.

However, in the middle of the year, I started thinking about where I wanted to go during Erasmus. Well, some of you may not know what Erasmus is, but according to the European Commission‘s website:

“Erasmus+ has opportunities for people of all ages, helping them develop and share knowledge and experience at institutions and organisations in different countries”.

Essentially, it is a programme that sends students from one country to do an entire semester in another country. 

After searching for the perfect place, which was limited, I decided to apply to a university in Linnaeus, Sweden. But after I was accepted, I had a few problems and had to apply to another country. At the time, I didn’t really know where to go, I knew that Amsterdam could be an option, but I wasn’t sure. After searching and a friend of mine suggesting it, I applied to the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. 

So, from September 2017 until January 2018, I went to Groningen to do Erasmus. I’ll explain this experience another day. I’ll just say that it was one of the BEST BEST  experiences I’ve ever had.

Finally, the last semester of my bachelor degree included a mandatory final project, which was an internship in a company within the sector. From March to July 2018, I did an internship in Catering Assiste, a company specialised in designing, building and maintaining industrial kitchens. My role was to study and implement a new model for inventory management and reorganise their respective warehouses, in Lisbon, Porto, Faro and all their service vehicles. Including, a layout design with optimisation routes for picking, while supporting the staff with ERP and barcode scanner implementation and parametrisation. 

This internship was awesome; I loved it; I learned so much. It’s interesting to see the differences between the theory you learn in school and the practicality of those theories… Which is almost none! But it made me think about what I wanted to do in the future. Overall, even though this was my first professional experience, it was a very good one.

In terms of the bachelor’s degree I choose, in the end, I think it made perfect sense because it fits professionally and has helped me with everything I’m learning during the PhD.

Alice

References

European Commission (2020) What Is Erasmus+?. [online] available from: <https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/about_en> [27 April 2020].