My fellows

2006/11/23 3 comments

There is a certain point where you have to decide what direction to take in your life. This summer I finished my studies in Stuttgart and Barcelona. Up to this point, things were more or less lineal: school, high school, university… But I’ve reached a point where there is no single path anymore. One of the possible next steps is to start working. There is also the option to keep studying and go for a PhD. And besides this first decision you can always choose where to do it… Barcelona, Spain, Europe, America. The options are endless!
It is not certain what option is the best one; as I see it, this is more a matter of opportunities and given the circumstances you have to take a shot. So here I am, 3 months later enrolled to the UCI university in California.

Why America? Why California? Why Irvine? and why UCI?
I’m sure many complex reasons can be found, but life tends to be simpler. I always had the idea to go to live in America (at least for a while). Maybe it’s because all the movies, shows, etc. I’ve seen on TV, I don’t know. But I think you kind of have the idea that there are the best things in America. So I said to myself, let’s check it out…
California is a specially interesting region for the telecommunications world, which happens to be directly related to my major. Needless to say that places like the Silicon Valley have state of the art technology and are also a great place for start up companies.
On a second term, what about the weather? After spending two years in Germany where I can assure you that the weather really sucks, I’d go for a change to a sunnier and warmer place.
Irvine? I’m guessing most of you’d never heard about it until now. The same thing happened to me. It turns out, there is a fellowship called Balsells fellowship, for catalan engineers that pays for graduate studies in the UCI university. The fellowship covers for the study costs and the living expenses for 1 whole year. This adds up to be more than 40,000$. So seeing this was a great opportunity for me, I applied for it and got accepted! yey! So now, I am a Balsells fellow. There are seven of us this year (unfortunately no girls) and we all arrived to California last September. We didn’t know each other before coming here, but in this case a fellowship binded us together. Now, we are like family. Here you can find a short bio about ourselves.

 

You may wonder, who would give away that kind of money… at first, I did too, yet I don’t anymore. Life is not about money; it is about people. We all have our stories, and struggle to go on with our lifes. Everybody has their own problems, and we feel close to the people that share them. That is why, after being able to overcome your own difficulties, you’d like to help people in your same situation. At least, I know I would. Pete Balsells was born in Catalonia, and at age 14 had to move to USA. He had to pay for his own studies, but once he did, he founded his own company and things really picked up. It was not easy at all. Right now, this is our situation, and this fellowship opens us the door to study in America, which would otherwise be impossible. That is why I am more than grateful to him, and I’d like someday to be able to do the same thing for somebody else.
At the same time, this is also a way of promoting the catalan culture around the world. Here is a video (in catalan) which explains a little bit more about the fellowship and us, the fellows…