From a conversation between two friends, Dilluns is born, a documentary directed by Anna Truyol and Álvaro Sanz, which narrates in more than 30 interviews, from the youngest to the oldest, the pressure that adolescents feel when deciding what to study and where to direct themselves. his professional life.
The transition from high school to higher education is a crucial step, marked by decisions that will shape your future. The director of the documentary, Anna Truyol, highlights the importance of sharing the processes and difficult moments of a person’s life naturally. “The fact of not sharing it is like you don’t see reality. It’s as if I now say that I have made a very cool documentary, I have presented it in the cinema, but I don’t explain why I have gone through bad times,” Truyol explains. This is especially relevant in a society that often highlights only success without taking into account the difficulties that come with it.
One of the main factors that contribute to the fear that young people feel is the pressure that the family and educational environment, unconsciously, exerts on them. Many times, children strive to do everything well, to make their parents proud and to choose the right thing so as not to disappoint them, and thus try to ensure a successful future.
Pol Reyes, who appears in the documentary, is 23 years old, and did not know what to study when he was in high school. Pol went to a neighborhood school and a good institute and explains that “the family environment, the parents and even you put pressure on yourself to try to follow the path that you think has the most recognition. That is, go to a good university, a prestigious career…” Therefore, when the time came to enter university, Pol had the opportunity to take the tests to enter ESADE, a private university, and study Law and International Relations. “That university could provide me with quality education, get contacts and could ensure that I would have a job when I finished my degree,” says Pol. However, he left ESADE at the beginning of the second year of his degree, because he “found himself totally lost and without desire.” of studying”.
At that time, Pol went through some difficult months and was receiving psychological help, which allowed him to “get to know myself more.” Shortly after, he enrolled in an unofficial online master’s degree and, subsequently, decided to enroll in the Business Administration degree at the University of Barcelona. After two years, he saw that going to university every day was not for him. “I realized that the format of the university itself was very heavy for me. I didn’t see myself going to class every day, it was hard for me to sit in a chair for hours. In the end I didn’t go to classes and only took the exams,” adds Pol. Despite not attending class, Pol passed all the subjects.
In September of this year, he signed up for a degree at the UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya), an online and public university. Pol is satisfied and believes that he has found a format that allows him to learn self-taught, apply concepts in his daily life and work at the same time.
On the other hand, the pressure of not entering the desired studies is another of the fears of adolescents. Diana Casellas, responsible for the area of awareness and education at Sant Joan de Déu, is 47 years old and was worried about not entering the degree in Journalism. “At that time, the entrance grade was very high and, in the end, things were a matter of tenths. I remember that moment with a lot of pressure because I didn’t know if I was going to get the grade,” explains Casellas. Indeed, Vanesa Soria, a psychopedagogue specialized in teaching-learning processes and teaching innovation techniques, highlights social competitiveness as a factor that adds pressure to young people when deciding their future, and that a student does not access a career. , does not mean that it is not useful for it. “We have a society very based on being the best,” adds Soria.
After finishing his studies in Journalism, Casellas worked in communication agencies and in some media, but he realized that he did not quite fit in. Shortly after, he began working at Oxfam Intermón for whom he carried out international campaigns and youth mobilization projects.
After seven years at Oxfam Intermón, he left work to teach high school classes at institutes. Casellas wanted to explore a dream she had always had: to be a teacher. “I lived through years of full crisis, first, my degree in Journalism and then, I realized that I could not approach teaching from the field of Humanities without another degree,” explains Casellas. For this reason, she studied a degree in Humanities at the UOC while working as a freelancer on social projects.
After finishing his studies, he entered the teaching staff job market. However, she did not have a permanent place at an institute and she made substitutions sporadically when she was called. “The stock market at that time was quite stagnant,” adds Casellas. For this reason, she decided to take the exams, because it was the only way to have a job. Casellas explains that “there was a lot of job instability and she couldn’t work for a month, then three months without doing anything, and so on. Her unemployment was running out and she needed a more stable job.”
Diana passed the exams with a very good grade, with an 8, but she was left without a place due to the cuts that occurred at that time. From the beginning they should have had more places available and at the last minute they decided to get fewer. At that moment, when she least expected it, she received a job opportunity: to be responsible for raising awareness in the social work of Sant Joan de Déu. “I have been here for a few years and I am delighted with life. I really like what I do because it has to do with the world of education and at the same time I work with young people,” she says.
On the other hand, the fear of making a wrong choice is another of the concerns of adolescents. Berta Reyes, one of the young women interviewed in the documentary, is 20 years old, and she did not have anything clear when she was in high school. “I had the feeling that if I chose a career I had to work on it for the rest of my life,” explains Berta. Furthermore, her father invited her to go to an initiative organized by her friends so that Berta could talk about her concerns. Thanks to the different talks she attended, Berta realized what she didn’t like and where she wanted to go. On many occasions she asked herself: what do I like to do? What interests me? Will I be able to do it…?
When the time came to decide, Berta opted to study Primary Education at the Ramon Llull University. Currently, he is in the third year of his degree and believes that he has made the right decision: “It offers me the part of socializing, having a job surrounded by people, whether adults or children, and I can also help prevent other children from suffering unpleasant experiences.” that I experienced at school,” explains Berta.
Finally, Blanca Madruga is a 57-year-old woman, who studied Law at the University of Barcelona when she was 17 years old. The early bird had no pressure when it came to making her decision, because, in her time, she could only choose between science or literature. “I wanted to be free. My parents had higher education and no one thought that my academic period would end at school and not start a career,” explains Madruga. Therefore, she chose Law because in addition to liking it, she knew that she would be good at it and she would be able to do justice with the different cases that she had to defend. However, what she did not know is that, in the future, the legal profession was not how she imagined it.
Once he finished his degree, he started working at Felipe Portabella, a law firm in Barcelona. After 14 years working as a lawyer, Madruga realized that “the system is not what we thought. He didn’t like her, it was not an effective system and the bad guys won if they wanted to. The early riser recognizes that “it’s not that she was bad at being a lawyer, it’s that she didn’t see herself working in an office for 8 hours all her life.”
For this reason, he decided to leave his job and began studying a degree in Humanities at the Pompeu Fabra University. At the same time, Blanca collaborated with África Viva, an NGO that had relations in Ethiopia. During the first year of her degree, Madruga, she went to teach English classes with “the little sisters of charity.” There, in Africa, she met a priest named “Father Ángel Olarán”, who built the University of Agriculture, where Madruga taught general culture classes.
After his Humanities studies, he decided to start a new life. Madruga came to Menorca 12 years ago when a friend of hers called her to run a hotel. Since then, she has not left the island. During the first four years, while she was running the hotel, she studied Agricultural Vocational Training, as it was the only thing she could study during her first year in Menorca. Thanks to these studies, Blanca was able to raise sheep on a one-hectare plot of land.
After four years, he came up with the idea of setting up a self-taught artisanal ceramics workshop in Maó (Menorca), a passion he had always had. Madruga started the new ceramics project at the age of 49 and the workshop has been successful. “I’ve put in a lot of hours, but it hasn’t been difficult to get clients. This is perhaps what has surprised me the most,” she adds. The now ceramist explains that she has been very lucky with the workshop that she started eight years ago, because for six years now, ceramics have become fashionable in Menorca. “The concern for ceramics has increased exponentially, both in the press, at events and, among people, in a brutal way. And me, I have caught that wave,” she explains.
Blanca Madruga has been living in Menorca for 12 years and is happy with the life she has now. It is a clear example of what ‘Dilluns’ reflects, a documentary where not getting to the desired degree is not a failure, where not finding the place where you fit perfectly is not a problem, and where leaving your current job because you are not happy is not either. As Madruga says: “In life you have to do many things, the fun thing is to learn, change and start again.”