Hello, I am Jose and I'm the ESR6 host by Università di Pisa within the GraWIToN project. My first month as a member of this project has been a delightful experience, and this is something good considering that I will stay in Pisa during the next three years!
From the scientific point of view, due to the proximity with EGO/VIRGO, I will be closely working with researchers based there, and for this reason, I've already had the opportunity to visit it. And what can I say new?! As fascinating as I expected.
There is another point I want to remark about the activities offered by the graduate school at UNIPI. They are not meant to teach us common curricular matters, but they are necessary to develop us as scientist (or engineers, or entrepreneurs) and these activities are not explained on manuals, books or papers (but it is necessary to write them or apply them in a Journal). But I don't want to explain now this part, I will have time to do it!
This opportunity offers to me another great experience. Living in a different country, learning a new language, meeting people otherwise you'd have never met, is the best way to broad your mind, and this first month has been full of those experiences.
Between the non-scientific experiences that being a Marie Curie fellow offers, there is a final one and probably the most important in my opinion. I think this is not only the experience I've had, I'm having and I will have, it's what I can offer to everybody I meet. I mean, the same that one day being an undergraduate student gave me, the opportunity to meet students from many countries (thanks to the Erasmus program), allowing me to open my mind. Without them, I am sure I would not have dared to participate in this fascinating project. And that's why I hope I will be able to offer new opportunities to many people, showing them that the world is bigger than they think.