Hello Marco! I know you’ve been waiting for some time for this interview, well here we are! Let’s start easy: who are you, how did you come in contact with Uniser and when?
Heyoooo! My name is Marco, I’m 25 and I’m from Centallo, a small town in southern Piemonte. After a life of scientific studies (I was halfway through my degree in Aerospace Engineering), I decided I needed a change and I am now in the final stages of my degree in languages, in Turin University.
I came in contact with Uniser during the first half of 2021. I was looking for a job related to my languages studies, and from Centallo I started broadening the radius of research until the circle reached Bologna – there, I saw the opportunity to become a Group Leader, and to be completely honest it seemed too good to be true! Going abroad with a group of students AND getting paid for this? I’m in! So I applied, and in June 2021 I left with the first group to Malta. Since then, I left with ten groups, towards Malta, Poland, France, Bulgaria, Lithuania and 4 times in my beloved Slovenia. I’m also about to leave for Spain with the eleventh! 🙂
What pushed you to join Uniser on a more stable basis?
Leaving as a Group Leader made me more aware of the aim and purpose of the cooperative. When I was 18, I lived my first real experience abroad alone: I left for three months for an internship in Slovakia, and it quite frankly changed my life. Since then, experiences abroad never ended for me, and the will to help teenagers being able to live such experiences started growing in me. For this reason, and as I deeply enjoyed the atmosphere I was breathing with the people I was interacting with as a Group Leader, I was constantly checking the blog for job openings in Uniser’s staff. When it came out, I applied and I was called for an interview. It went well, and here I am!
Since you entered as a staff member, what have you been doing, what are your main activities?
I am part of the Mobility Coordinators team! As I say when presenting myself to some hosting partners, “I will be taking care of the more logistical and operational aspects of the mobility” 🙂 In practice, after the early activity of selection of the candidates, I start taking care of groups when all the agreements are set: I (try to) manage the communication between Sending and Hosting organisations related to students’ infos, their accommodation and work placements, and I prepare the pre-departure meeting with the students to help understand better what’s in for them. During the mobility itself, I am in constant contact with the students or their group leader, helping in solving any matter that may arise, as well as monitoring the situation and feelings of the groups.
Which one/s do you enjoy more and why?
I think the best part is the coordination itself – when all the parts working on a mobility are on the same page, communicating with proper timing and completeness of information, I find it soooo satisfying! Also, I really like to have the pre-departure meetings when I manage to have the students being active and participative; it’s a wonderful way to interact and get to know some young people and understand how to be more “relatable” and understandable for them too. It’s always a learning experience!
On the contrary, which do you find more challenging?
I think it’s having to deal with people that are not really informed on what managing a mobility implies in terms of work, working parts and conditions to comply with – for this reason, it’s always very important to have informative moments for everybody so that we are on the same page 🙂
What is your relationship with your team leader and members?
My team leader, Cecilia, was the first person that believed in me. I got to talk with her multiple times when I still was only a Group Leader, and she always supported me and gave me great ideas and suggestions. When I got to know that she would have been my team leader in everyday working life, I couldn’t have been happier. She is a great guide, and I think we have pretty similar characters. I am grateful for this!
In general, I have great relationships with my colleagues – I reckon I probably talk too much, but the more I get to know them, the more they are interesting people to me! I was discussing with one of them that it’s so cool that everybody has a more or less common ideology (although in a very varied spectrum), even if we have such different backgrounds and life experiences! This makes conversation 10 times more interesting and stimulating 🙂
Do you see each other outside of work? Do you share any hobbies or passions?
Actually, we do! Apparently the time spent together planning, dealing with people and problems is not enough, ahahah. We enjoy meeting for a drink, a chat and some activities together. We also share some passions – for example, I listen to the same podcast or watch the same Youtubers as some of them, with others we share the same very niche music artists, with others I share the passion for cycling. There are plans to go karaoking, and in general having some fun listening to some (possibly live) music. Moreover, I went on a fun trip to Belgrade with three of them, and this summer I went on a cycling trip in Umbria and took the occasion to go meet Lucrezia, who lives there 🙂
Any other hobbies or passions of yours that you would like to share with us?
Sooo, I love sports – I’m an amateur cyclist and I just recently started playing football for a local team in Bologna; I used to play bocce (and, fun fact, I won a national bronze medal when I played in under-18 category), and intensely follow tennis on TV. I also watch a lot of (too much) stuff on YouTube, very miscellaneous things – from Minecraft gameplays to engineers building amazing contraptions, and I’m of course a PewDiePie bro.
Theeen, I have been an entertainer and educator for children and young entertainers during summer camps and yearly events for more than a decade. I love doing so, and I think it also helped me a lot when starting my work as a Group Leader.
Finally, there’s this group of 120 people from all around Italy… no seriously, I’m part of this group of people with whom we play a big fantacalcio tournament. The wonderful thing? We get along very well, to the point that we decided to meet in real life, so now we are organising different football tournaments around the country – we recently played the fourth edition in Brescia, and next time we’ll go towards central/southern Italy!
You’ve just moved to Bologna, how do you like it?
I did! Since 2020, when I left for my Erasmus in Serbia, and then due to my departures as a Group Leader, I’ve been considering myself with “no fixed abode” ahahahah, although I knew I could always go back to my family’s house at the foot of Alps. Nonetheless, I arrived at a stage in my life in which I needed to stabilise myself for a second, or at least be able to answer the question “where do you live?”.
So, after some indecision and scouting, I found a good deal for a place in Bologna, where I live with one of the closest friends I have here. Bologna is a city I love, and I am able to physically go to the office, where a lot of my beloved colleagues are. I still need to adapt to the city in terms of noise – I lived my life in the middle of the countryside, so it was totally silent after 8 PM, and I cannot say so about Bologna – but I’m definitely happy about my choice! I also know I’m (most likely) not going to be forever in Bologna: there are so many places still to live! 😀
I know you like podcasts, could you suggest one or two to your fellow colleagues?
I’m quite late on the podcast trend, but I’m in nonetheless! My favourite one is definitely Pendolino. It’s a podcast whose main aim is to discuss footballers transfers, but starting from there it becomes more like a chat with friends, without taking it too seriously. It’s a joking and light environment, and it really boosts my mood. Fun fact – I am present in one of their episodes – I participated in a live registration in Rome and I was lucky enough to get called on stage to discuss whether some random stuff (and some footballers) are underrated, overrated or fairly rated. Go check it out!
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