Meet Luca Ferrazzoli

Former exchange student at Linköping University

Could you describe the kind of projects you are involved in right now? At the moment, I am working with Radar Systems in a big project about air traffic control for airports. This project is for the Italian government but our company has business all over the world and I hope to work abroad in the future. In the past I worked within the advisory department of Ernst&Young and I was involved in some international projects.

Did you have any assumptions about life in Sweden that turned out to be completely wrong? I didn't expect it to be that much queuing in Sweden. You had to queue for everything, for going to the bank and for buying tickets for the parties, especially the Luciakravallen where you had to queue for a whole night. So this was something that surprised me in a bit of a bad way, but otherwise there were many things that were better than I expected. All projects with different nationalities developed my teamwork ability enormously, an ability I believe has been very useful in my career in terms of managing people and managing projects.

How do you stay in touch with your fellow students from Linköping? I have many friends from my studies in Linköping both Italians and people from all over the world, and I meet them often. A few weeks ago we had a gathering in Barcelona, this year there have been two big meetings in Italy and in two weeks I am going to Gothenburg. It’s really a worldwide network that started with the great time we spent in Linköping. Apart from having a good time together, I believe it’s useful in a professional way. We exchange experiences, exchange views on problems and learn a lot discussing issues with people from so many different nationalities.

If given the chance to go back, would you have done something differently? Yes, I would have enrolled on the whole master’s degree in manufacturing management rather than just exchange studies. I enjoyed Sweden so staying another year would have been great, and also, I have friends with that master’s degree from LiU which has proven to be good in the job market.

What assumptions did you have about Scandinavian culture, and how was the reality? I had heard that Scandinavians drink a lot, which turned out to be true. It was also interesting to see that people acted differently depending on the time of the day. In the daytime, Scandinavians are quite reserved, not super friendly and not super social, but they are very nice, reliable and serious about university. During the nights on the other hand, they are extremely social, even more than Italians!

Finally, the overall average student satisfaction placed Linköping University 2nd of all 203 participating educational institutions in the International Student Barometer in 2010, and 1st in Sweden - why, would you say? I believe there are two main reasons for this. To start with, as mentioned earlier, the way of teaching with a lot of practical training, is appreciated. Secondly, I think life in Linköping is very good for a student. It’s a small city with a large number of students and it’s easy to meet real friends. It’s also easy to access all the different student pubs such as Flamman, HG and Platå, and there are organized trips to Russia and Estonia. In addition, from Linkoping it is easy to visit other amazing places in the north of Europe such as Lappland, Denmark and Norway.
 

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Last updated: Tue Aug 14 16:03:08 CEST 2012