Looking for the right place to develop skills and exchange ideas with people from your specific field of study? Today EDUopinions is going to explain what EESTEC is and how it can help your student path.
What is EESTEC?
Electrical Engineering Students’ European Association is an apolitical, non-governmental and non-profit organization for EECS students at universities, institutes and schools of technology. EESTEC is present in 27 countries and 54 cities all over Europe, consisting of more than 5000 members and influencing even more!
EESTEC aims to develop international contacts and to encourage the exchange of ideas among Electrical Engineering and Computer Science students through professional workshops, cultural student exchanges and publications. With various activities that EESTEC provides, it creates opportunities for students to develop in their academic, professional and social lives.
Do you want to network with people passionate about hard skills along with soft skills, broaden your horizons with opportunities only for EECS students, travel and gain professional experience?
Let’s hear it from the students
Sebastian Skoczen at LC Krakow, LC Madrid, JLC Almeria, LC Athens (4 years in EESTEC)
On the 1st of September 2015, I entered university facilities for the first time. I knew it would be a new chapter of my life, I just didn’t know yet how much different it would be from everything I knew so far. The first months turned out into a hard-working routine. I was new, I didn’t know how things work here and I had to adjust to the new learning system, a much more autonomous one. After some time, I realised that I don’t know actually how to do that, how to adjust, how to plan my work and how to present the results to my professors.
The solution came, as usual, by an accident. One day, at the beginning of a lecture, two students showed up to present some kind of student organisation… I didn’t know much back then about it. It was in general quite interesting idea: travelling, learning, networking, developing yourself… you know, all of these buzz words we hear nowadays everywhere. Eventually, the presentation finished and 2 weeks after I didn’t even remember about it. And then one day, when I was passing through my faculty, I noticed a familiar name. “EESTEC” was written on the poster, hanging among thousands of the others. But there was something different about this one… they were making recruitment and the deadline was – TODAY. I grabbed my phone and started writing my application panicking that another opportunity would fly by. It didn’t.
A few days later I joined EESTEC and a few months after that I was flying to Madrid for my first event of many that I attended during the next 4 years of my studies. What I found in EESTEC, you see, was not only a complementary knowledge to the technical one I was learning at the university – the so-called Soft Skills. I also visited more than 20 cities in Europe, met more than 600 people from every corner of it and had the opportunity to try myself in so many things that I stopped even counting!
All of that reshaped the person that was the first time sitting at the university 4 years ago. From a person who could barely organise his own life, to a person who organises events for more than 400 participants. From a person scared to talk in English, to the person that uses it on an everyday basis, gives speeches and works in international teams. From a person who was so afraid to fail, that rarely was trying out new things, to a person that tries new things every day, knowing that failure is just another opportunity to learn. From a person who was very result-oriented, to a person who always put people first. Finally, from a person who thought that there are things that are impossible, to a person who knows that it’s just a matter of how and with who you are attempting to achieve them.
Sounds too good to be true? Well, then see it yourself! 😉
Gasper Kirbis at LC Ljubljana (3 years in eESTEC)
How did EESTEC affect my route as a student? Some words come quickly to mind – dramatically, significantly, drastically and I could probably find a couple of more words. If I look at my freshman year and imagine myself ignoring what EESTEC has to offer, a whole dimension would be missing from my life and my mind, hungry for knowledge and new life experiences, would have never been satisfied to such extent. As a freshman it quickly put me into a world of chaos and order, both interchanging a couple of times a year down the road and giving me opportunity after opportunity to challenge myself to the fullest. Slowly I started realizing what people meant when they said that EESTEC is a playground for life after university.
Do you know that feeling of horror and anxiety, but at the same time thrill and excitement, while a little creature on your right shoulder keeps saying “go for it”, and on the left shoulder, another creature telling you a thousand excuses not to? After more than three years in EESTEC, I am glad I listened to my right shoulder. Each time I seized an opportunity and the experience had finished, a new one presented itself, in a different shape with the same feeling.
I’ll never forget the moments in hot Greece on an international event, where we were working on international aspects of our association – a group of 20 students, who were so much into the topics and discussions that we hadn’t noticed the lack of AC for four hours, the room boiling hot. Or the beautiful moments spent with participants from all over Europe in a one-week exchange we organized in Ljubljana.
Throughout the years EESTEC had put me in situations of extreme stress, joy, discomfort and comfort, all in all, pushed me to become a better me. It showed me the beauty of deep interpersonal relationships and let me play and tackle with challenges of organizations – leading people, managing processes, transferring knowledge and teaching. It challenged me in my time management – handling studies and the new lifestyle alongside other parts of life. It had given me hundreds of questions (yes, questions) I did not have the answer for, for years.
EESTEC has prolonged my study years twice to be honest – though I never felt that I was throwing away any minute of it, however tough it was for me. Seizing every opportunity that I could and felt I should go for made me value life and realize how large and tiny our world is, how different and the same our cultures are. It made me realize what is important to me and carved a path forward. It painted me the picture of how can we, young people, affect and impact the world.
I could write a couple of pages about all the places I’ve travelled, all the people I’ve met and all the different experiences I had gathered. That’s a given – EESTEC provides these opportunities in an arm’s reach, and one needs just to extend his own.
Conclusion
These are just two of the incredible stories that EESTEC members are willing to share. We hope that they were able to inspire you and to make you curious about the organization and its values.
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