Learning by doing

I discovered the Explicit Project thanks to Dr. Brais Suárez Eiroa, who introduced me to it when I was finishing my masters. I really love the idea, so I join the Post growth innovation lab and I was sent for a month to Brussels, to work with the ABIS team, fantastic people who welcomed me wonderfully.

I want to talk about my experience in two ways, in a personal level and in a working level. Starting for the latter, I was working in Deliverable 1.2, doing a systematic literature review, to study how Techniques of Futuring were being used under a circular economy. It was great and challenging. It was my first job as a researcher, so everything was new and

I was able to learn a lot, but the best was to feel part of a team. Not only ABIS team, they could not have treated me better, but all people I was lucky to talk with and work with inside the Explicit project did not treat me as a freshman, but as a college, understanding my lack of experience, helping me when need it and encouraging me in my job.

On the other hand, in a personal level, I recommend a lot this kind of experiences because they give so much in a personal developing way that I feel I could not have found at home. That is in part because of the experience itself; going alone to another country and meet new people, other spaces and so on; but it was as well because I had problems with my accommodation that position me in a hard spot, where I found myself completely out of my comfort zone and having to learn a lot about how to deal with it. But here is where my final reflection enters.

This experience made me appreciate what being in a community means and broke a little bit more this mirage of individualism that I believe this system we live in try to put upon us sometimes. Feeling accompanied in the bad movement for my loved ones and so accepted entering in a new space, made me appreciate even more the important connexions between different people and how can help you in a personal and professional way.

By the way, I found a lot of amazing places to visit in this month. Another reason to go to this kind of adventure.