Started this week off by contracting the flu. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel absolutely abysmal, which is why I asked to have Tuesday morning off. The people at Rato were understanding, and offered me multiple paths towards faster recovery: from taking the whole day off to abstaining from any strenuous activities. But by Tuesday afternoon, after having taken a pill for the fever, I actually felt pretty good and returned to work. It’s the end of the week and from what I can tell I think it’s safe to say I haven’t passed it onto anyone else, and it’s only going to be a slight inconvenient cough that I will be bringing into the next week with me now.
As for any of the work I actually did, I would say this week was more extraordinary compared to usual. The main focus – a bit more for the others and slightly less for me since I was sick – was a series of school visits to talk about employment and inform the youth about volunteering and the European Solidarity Corps. I went with Nuno alongside Sofia to two of these classes on Thursday. My Portuguese is sadly still pretty poor when it comes to more complicated stuff, so I couldn’t really follow the course of the lesson that much. I won’t try to explain what was happening or delve into my interpretation of the events to a great extent, but I believe, through a practical task involving tablets that we handed out to the students to facilitate this activity, that the youngsters were made to think critically about how a corporate recruitment process usually works, which was achieved by making them consider various made-up candidates’ CV applications and then reflecting on the evaluations and choices they made, of who they were more likely to choose or not and why. Nuno is a great educator, and you could tell that the questions he chose to probe really did make the class reconsider their choices and challenge their preconceptions organically.
Sofia told me shortly before or after the first lesson that she likes these sorts of things, of going to schools, giving classes and facilitating workshops and so on. What she didn’t like as much was public speaking, and, unfortunately for her, it was mostly why we had come this time. Nuno brought us so he could pose us to the class as living examples of what European Solidarity Corps volunteers really are – to show that we were just regular kids like them, questioning our future employability, with the Corps as one of our pathways towards becoming professionals (or at least that’s what I believe the message was supposed to be). Our goal was to have a dialogue with the classroom about our volunteering, why one might choose to do it, and how it can be purposeful to the individual. For someone who doesn’t like public speaking, I have to commend Sofia for facing the challenge head on. If anyone is a good example of a Corps’ volunteer, it’s probably her, as both her professional and personal growth is easily apparent and traceable.
Besides that though, I don’t really have anything else to say about the visits. Maybe just that I’m personally a little bit disappointed in myself for not speaking in Portuguese more during the first of the two lessons, and maybe coming off a little too serious for the second. Regardless though, I think it was a nice change of pace for me, and seeing a bunch of high school seniors was a good source for some introspective reflection.
The rest of the week I just kept working on the game, but it proved to be a bit challenging due to how utterly fatigued I felt from being sick. I can’t say I’m very satisfied with this week’s accomplishments (or moreso the lack thereof). I’m hoping, though, that by next week I’ll return back in full force.
