Hi everyone! I am Alice from Rome, Italy. I am 26 and I am studying Educational Sciences at the University of Roma Tre. Because I am almost finishing my third and last year of the Bachelor, I am looking to understand which step will be the next for my professional future. I am still confused about what my professional identity could be because I am quite impatient to solve the great problems of the world through education, but I still don’t know where to start. I believe that, as humankind, we are facing important challenges that are asking to be solved with the contribution of all, like the global warming, the increasing of migrations from areas affected by conflicts and climate change, the spread of new nationalist tendencies, and the crisis of the individual identity related to the globalization, the overwhelm of information and the spread of technology.
I see a reality full of differences, as everyone is unique and different from another, still struggling with inequalities, as a lot of people live in extreme poverty or in conflict areas, while others, distant from all these problems, consume more than is necessary. I think that nowadays it’s needed a global vision that makes us exit from our limited horizons through an education that can help the development of critical thinking and ability to face the complexity of reality. Before starting my Bachelor in Educational Sciences, I have collected experiences from different contexts that I consider a precious background.
During my childhood and adolescence I played the piano for almost ten years, and the last 5 years I joined an orchestra in my city. Through this involvement I improved my ability to play and work together with other people, feeling that everyone was contributing with their own effort to the performance of the music. I think that this image is still in my mind and reminds me how beautiful and precious is when every person has the possibility to develop their own potential and play their personal melody, finding the way to harmonize themselves with the melodies of the others.
But my experiences don’t finish here. After high school, I started a Bachelor in Biotechnology and I graduated in 2017. This scientific field has given me the knowledge about the biology and the interconnections between different organisms, from the viruses and the bacteria to the plants and the animals, and the potential of genetic engineering for the future. Even if it was a really interesting field, I understood that I wanted to work more in contact with the people and I had a first hand experience of how difficult it was asking to myself what my dreams were, what I dreamt to realize.
One of the experiences that most impacted the development of my awareness was an exposition about the nuclear weapons, which showed me not only the unimaginable destructive power of these weapons, but also the dangerous reasoning of those who support their use: justifying the annihilation of those who represent an obstacle to the achievement of a country goal. But the exposition explained that this thought is something that has been originated by the nature of human beings. Indeed, as human beings, we live in our everyday life relations with others, and tend not to manage and solve our conflicts in a proper way. This is why, after this exposition, I started to aspire to contribute to the development of a pacific society through education.
Now I can say that beyond the specific profession that I can choose, I have understood that the most important part for me is to dialogue and cooperate together with people to achieve the humankind common goals and create the conditions for the young people to learn how to live together, as one of the UNESCO’s four pillars of learning.
Starting from this preamble, this Erasmus traineeship represents for me the possibility to discover more about my plans for the future, to meet new people from different countries and cooperate with them, sharing our dreams, fears and aspirations for the future.
I want to contribute to this experience with my knowledge and sensibility from the educational and scientific fields, dialoguing with my colleagues in order to achieve our projects and ideas to create a positive change for the people and the planet.
Alice Ferrario, intern@ICDET