Leia Jiménez Navarro, Gemma Muñoz Burgués, Marta Gil Bardají and José Alejandro Santamaría. Four young Catalans who ten years ago triumphed in selectivity with 9.9, 9.7, 9.6 and 9.7, respectively. The four confess to having studied the career of their dreams, something they will never regret. That later the future puts you in one place or another… it is something unpredictable, or not. What they are clear about is that you should never let yourself be overcome by the obstacles that appear along the way, that getting a ten in selectivity does not guarantee economic success, or does it, and that studying what moves you and you are passionate about has the best of the rewards: “It gives you happiness”, these four university students agree, in their day, of note. They tell La Vanguardia their experience in the last decade. They work or research on what they chose when they jumped to the University. But they make it clear that this satisfaction from doing what they like the most is not synonymous with guaranteed success. Despite being so brilliant in their studies, when it comes time to transfer that knowledge to the world of work, things don’t roll by themselves. You have to continue training and their day to day is not very different from that of other people their age, even if they can work what they like
Leia Jiménez Navarro got a 9.7 in the selectivity exam in 2013 and, since then, she has never stopped studying. Two races; Classical Philology and Catalan Philology, a master’s degree in Greek papyrology at Oxford, a doctoral thesis on education in antiquity, which is still in progress, and why not do a postdoc afterwards? That will have to be seen. At the moment Leia is very clear about her roadmap. She wants to become a university professor and is on her way: “I do what I like, even if it means giving up certain things and making the occasional sacrifice, the important thing is that my work gives me great personal satisfaction.”
And so it is, Leia confesses that dedicating yourself to research requires reestablishing your priorities: “You have to spend long periods of time abroad, which implies pausing your personal relationships, separating yourself from your family and leaving your comfort zone a lot.” In addition, the economic precariousness that must be dealt with – “There are times when we barely make ends meet,” he says – and the professional uncertainty that this generates are difficult to bear for this young philologist who, despite this, she lives in love with her profession: “We make it possible for everyone to enjoy its historical-cultural legacy and we reconstruct the past,” she points out, adding that language experts are essential in a society bathed in decontextualization and misinformation.
A few years ago Leia received a scholarship to do a master’s degree at Oxford, where she specialized in Greek papyrology. Since then, the young Catalan woman has been a professional recovering texts lost over time and saving them from oblivion: “What I like the most is working with private correspondence, reading family letters from 2,000 years ago gives you a vision of privacy and day by day of those people that is priceless”. In addition, papyrology is a discipline with a few years of experience and a lot of research ahead: “That makes it easier to be motivated.”
Leia knows that she could fill her portfolio if she dedicated herself to something else, however, the personal satisfaction that books bring her is incomparable to the money that such “successful” career opportunities in the job market would give her: “I am lucky and satisfied to do what I like, that’s the most important thing”. For this reason, she now takes the opportunity to send a message to the youngest, to those who find themselves in the same situation that she was in ten years ago: “If they choose what they like, what really moves them, they will always be right.” “.
Marta Gil Bardají is another one of those brilliant heads that in 2013 was close to reaching ten in the PAU of Catalonia. In her case it was exactly 9.6. Originally from Barcelona and with a great professional career, Marta Gil finds herself, ten years later, as director of the Development and Research department at Vórtex, a Catalan company dedicated to atmospheric modeling of the wind industry: “We use the same models that they are used to predict the weather, but we use them to study the past and be able to know in great detail what the wind is doing in a specific place in the world”. In this way, they provide a forecast of the power that can be generated at a specific site: “We help companies that want to build a wind farm to find out if the project is viable or not,” sums up the Catalan.
Marta confesses that she was very clear that she wanted to study Physics and Mathematics at the university. However, it was at the end of the degree when doubts surfaced: now a master? She was not so clear about it: “I didn’t even know where to go when I started looking at what options there were, so I decided to start working live. I didn’t want to rush and end up studying something that I wouldn’t like later”. And she hit the target. Marta started working at Vortex when she finished her degree and two years later, with some progress on her way, she opted to do a specialization in Meteorology: “Something very applied that I would not have imagined doing when I finished university.”
Now she continues working in what has become her ideal job, as she defines it: “It’s a creative, calm job, in which you travel a lot… Everything I wanted.” Taiwan, Korea, Denmark, Scotland, Lion and Munich are some of the places that the young woman has visited in the last year: “It is almost always going up and down to serve clients, but this time I took a few days of vacation to take advantage of the flights to Taiwan and to Korea and do some sightseeing on my own.” A grateful job and a company that takes great care of its employees: “I earn very well, I am very happy, I have been here for almost 5 years and it has been noticed in the salary, they treat us very well”.
“If at the age of 18 I had known that I was going to encounter this panorama, I would surely have studied something else, but I really like what I do, so now I have to take the chestnuts out of the fire.”
Ten years after obtaining the highest selectivity rating in Catalonia, a 9.9, Gemma Muñoz Burgués has learned, over time, that you have to look carefully at the type of professional opportunities that each career has before opting for a.
The situation is as follows: Gemma studied Translation and Interpreting at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, ??then went to Germany to work for five years in a private translation agency. At the same time, she studied a master’s degree in Interpreting at the Cologne Technical College and her last year has been spent doing an internship at the European Commission in Luxembourg. Now, she has returned to Spain to carry out a new project: “I am starting in Barcelona as a freelancer. At the moment I am looking for clients to translate and interpret, especially to interpret, and I also do some subtitling”. But what is the problem? That her profession is not regularized and, therefore, she lives with great professional uncertainty.
“I’m running into many obstacles along the way, I don’t know when or how much I’m going to get paid, I also send my resume and no one pays attention or tells me that they want to lower my rate.” The Catalan has found herself with a very wild profession, this is how she defines it, and she is not sure what will happen to her future if the situation continues as it is: “When I got here I had no idea how it worked this sector and I have discovered that you cannot make a living from translating books. Now I have to wake up, otherwise I will have to look for something more regular within a company”.
José Alejandro Santamaría is in Irvine, eight hours from taking a flight that will take him to Barcelona to hug his parents and attend his sister Gabriela’s graduation ceremony at the UAB. He can’t believe that two years have passed since he last set foot in the city. But even hazier, he still has the memory of ten years ago when, as a boy, he left the Leonardo da Vinci Institute in San Cugat del Vallés to take the university entrance exams (PAU or EBAU). A teenager who discovered with surprise that he had been one of the best grades in Catalonia: 9.7.
Now, this 27-year-old is pursuing a doctorate in aerospace engineering at the University of California at Irvine, researching the qualities of ammonia as a fuel, capable of generating energy that is cleaner than CO2. For this, he is in one of the most cutting-edge laboratories in the world, with research groups that are looking for ways to alleviate the consequences of climate change, such as that of Jack Brouwer, director of the National Center for Fuel Cell Research. California is already implementing some of the advances.
“Deciding to get involved in creating a sustainable future for the planet is motivating, all the research groups are hoping, which is the opposite of the disenchantment and defeatism that is also in my generation. And I am lucky to be surrounded by people like me, who are looking for solutions”.
Santamaría completed the double degree in Aerospace Engineering and Mathematics at the Polytechnic of Catalonia, within the Higher Interdisciplinary Training Center (CFIS) program, which supports high-achieving students. “Such interesting people and good colleagues, we are connected, all spread around the world.” Later he obtained the Pere Balsells scholarship, a distinguished Catalan engineer who has supported two hundred young people to study at the University of Irvine. “Without this help I would not be where I am.” One day, he hopes, he will return to live in Catalonia because this is where he would like to settle.
