EESTEC Spirit

 
The result? you finish your studies in due time, just like a bunch of other people, and suddenly you realize that the life you were supposed to enjoy at university has been left aside. And you, big expert in linear systems and differential algebra, find with astonishment in your job interview that all this knowledge is assumed, and they keep asking what else have you done. What else?!?! Is that not enough?!?!

Well it is not. The truth is that outside there that is not much. Tons of us with our just finished studies realize that apart from having almost no life during the last years, we have neglected aspects of our education that later will become the most valuable. The so called soft-skills. What is that? just keep reading...

This long sermon should help you decide what you want to do with your life from now untill the day you graduate, and what you want to be and know that day. We strongly encourage you to not stop living for your studies, and to have positive and entrepreneurial spirit towards new things. IT IS WORTH IT !

EESTEC

EESTEC is a european association of electrical engineering students, which gathers students of related fields like power engineering, telecommunications and computer engineering. It is a nonprofit organization with a main goal. to create another level of connection between students, universities and companies, where students are behind the wheel.

EESTEC currently has over 40 Local Committees (LC) in over 20 european countries. We are more than 1700 members, and the number is growing every day, with new LCs every year and more and more members in every LC.

EESTEC Events

“EESTEC is about people,

travelling and further learning”. Could be a good idea of what EESTEC represents.

EESTEC international activities are known as EESTEC Events. All the LCs, more than 40, organize at least one international event per year, where the rest of LCs are invited as participants. With average of more than 3 events per month, we can almost say there is always an EESTEC event taking place. When it comes to deciding what event to participate to, it is really hard to choose one among them!

The workshops are the most popular events in associations like EESTEC. They are events sponsored by companies and universities in which the hosting LC takes care of the food and accomodation expenses of the participants, that only assume their travel costs.

During the event, sponsors and universities present their projects to the participants, organize visits to laboratories and gather CVs from participants interested. Also it's common to organize working sessions where all the participants work together or in groups towards some objectives related to the topic of the workshop. For the companies this is enormously benefitial, given that the students that get involved in organizations like EESTEC, unsettled, enterprising and lively, will probably take over responsibility posts in companies around Europe in a few years. Companies know this, hence their interest in approaching us during this events.
When our "Contact Person" receives and invitation to an event, he forwards it inside his LC, so that all the members can know about it. When you participate to an EESTEC event, you normally pack for a week and travel to the hosting LC's city, alone or with company, depending on how many invitations are given to your LC. Once in the destination airport or station, the organizers normally pick you up and take you to the hotel with the rest of the participants. When you get to the hotel, you meet the rest of participants from other countries, that in a few hours they seem like lifetime friends, and that often end up like that.

That is the boginning of an exhausting and gratifying week. During the day, except for some cultural visits and free time, participants attend conferences, working sessions, laboratories, visits to sponsors, and during the night the amazing parties leave you out of sleeping hours before the next day.

The day the workshop ends, during the "Farewell Party", few hours before going back to your life, you realize it's too late for you. The bug has bitten you, and you are not sad because it ended, you are actually thinking about the next one!

Apart from the workshops and other technical events, EESTEC LCs sometimes organize non leisure events, like the exchanges. An exchange normally doesn't have technical contents, so it's usually not attractive to companies or universities. Due to the absence of sponsors, participants are normally asked for a small participant fee, to cover part of their expenses.

The biggest event in EESTEC is the Annual Congress, in which 2 or 3 experimented members of each EESTEC LC make the decissions that will guide EESTEC International's course for the following year. Among many other things, the following year's EESTEC International Board is elected during Congress.

Soft Skills

As if it wasn't enough with the personal experiences that travelling and meeting people provide, associations like EESTEC offer you something that you won't find anywhere else.

The so called "soft skills" are complements to your education, of growing importance as you progress in your studies, that reach the highest peak of value when you get  a job and remain in you forever.

When LC Madrid organized EESTEC International Congress, i had travelled to an EESTEC event just once, and had no idea of what the congress was. After a few months helping contact sponsors, university professors, the dean, vice-deans, finding logistics for more than 100 participants, designing a whole marketing campaign,  with all the promotional materials imaginable, recovering from every failure, celebrating each success, each step, and finally see all that people that were there thanks to your work, depending on you, enriches and broadens your horizons in such a way that you feel capable of optimizing a United Nations congress!

Apart from that rise of self-esteem that we all have each time we organize and event, those skills remain in us and result of enormous help each time we embark on a new project.

That, and idioms. There is nothing for learning idioms like using them. We all notice after a few events that our languaje skills have increased greatly without even realizing. This is so important in nowadays market and life.

Not more important than being able to speak to big audiences in another languaje. In many cases, the apparently insurmountable obstacle becomes our strong point, no matter where or who.

EESTEC Spirit

The original question is still unanswered. What is EESTEC Spirit?

The EESTEC Spirit is the feeling of having something in common with different people from different countries, a shared languaje that  comes out in a tavern in Helsinki, a sauna in Budapest, or a bus in Ankara, a languaje that suddenly you realize are speaking when everyone around you, people two days ago were strangers, now are coleagues, tomorrow friends and who knows the day after.