Frustrated by the educational system: designing a service at the end of it

[giacomo]

SUMMARY:

I'm frustrated by the lack of aim-talking of the current educational system. I went studying abroad 1 year to escape from this frustration.

Now I’m back in Italy working on a service design project in order to create a career guidance service for graduates in the cultural-creative industries.

 

1 FRUSTRATION:

I'm 24 years old from a small and somnolent italian city where I'm graduating in architecture.

My ride goes around my main FRUSTRATION: the current educational system.

Main reason for this FRUSTRATION: we don’t talk about aims in schools (a lovely book about aim-settings in school: happiness and education )

1 YEAR ABROAD:

Last year I just walked around this frustration: I went studying abroad: 6 months in Boston then 6 in Oslo. (parents paid for me + very small grants from EU programmes). 

Invaluable experiences and a wealth of contacts

Especially in Boston I realized Europe is so tiny… I’ll always remember: when they were asking the home country of the students, they were usually forget to mention Europe

1 CITY/DISCIPLINE:

During this year I've got the freedom to investigate my main interest: SERVICE DESIGN (and public services)

Since I can’t see an adequate mindset/market for designing services in Italy I’m planning to relocate to COPENHAGEN with my partner.

Another reason to relocate is the quality of life and especially work/life balance. (more on this later)

1 THESIS:

Now I'm writing my thesis/final project. 

But I prefer to consider this my first personal project out-of-school since I’m doing this project without any real professor/academic tutor… in fact I’m hacking the system in order to be able to have only external tutors.

I’m moving right now to a co-working space in Milan where I’ll be able to receive frequent face-to-face feedback from people I esteem. (I’m and I will paying the expenses with freelance work as web developer and graphic designer).

ABOUT THIS PROJECT: IN GENERAL

So the project is a career guidance/mentoring service for anyone willing to work in the cultural and creative industries. More generally It's an invitation for students to look after graduation before it happens… something that doesn't really happen normally.  

There’s already an ocean of useful advices and written experiences out there: they’re just not curated or framed effectively (IMHO). Thus the main value I want to add is on curating, packaging and delivering what’s already out there. (main inspiration: http://instituteofyou.com/ )

ABOUT THIS PROJECT: ALREADY DONE

So far to start this project I've organized five events (since 2009) in which alumni of my school come back 5 years from graduation to tell their life and work stories. 

Eye-opening for me and hopefully for my colleagues as well. For sure it gave me a consistent network and clarity on some of the opportunities out there.

Thanks for reading! 

P.S. I’ve tried to browse some other rides to find similarities but in the end I gave up, there’s just too much to read… I hope that Alberto, Nadia or some “edge-connectors” will be able to point some stories-

[noemi]

Resources on Edgeryders

Hi Giacomo!

I’m Noemi, an Edgeryder pretty much sharing your view on education systems and how they fail to make us reflect on personal aim or offer opportunities to reach those aims.

There are plenty of people here whose stories are similar to yours, but what I like is that they each have their own turning points, moments in which somebody realises what they want or don’t want for their future and take action to pursue their interests. They are unique you know, for me it’s been a blast peeking into somebody else’s life whom I don’t know but can totally relate to and even learn something.

Personally, I’ve learned that not only in Romania we have a problem with the educational system, also Italians or the British share similar takes, and struggling individually is not comforting at all. which is why building networks and learning from each other helps.

So here’s Di’s story, a young Law graduate dissatisfied about the schooling and lack of aim in her career, and so she took up volunteering in Serbia. She’s still looking for prospective, more meaningful paths… maybe you can comment on her mission report and let her know about your work?

Rossella is another Edgeryder who, in her words “decided to quit my well promising career as a researcher in Economics and to start all over again. I was writing my PhD dissertation and I felt quite unsatisfied about academic life.”

And finally, here’s my own story basically narrating about struggles to reach not-so-clear-ideals after graduating from university. My strategy has been to keep on doing extra-curricular work, taking up internships to find out what I love doing and try to settle somewhere.

Get back to us all when you have the time, it’s immensely appreciated!

[valentina_cuzzocrea]

Hi giacomo,

what’s most

Hi giacomo,

what’s most striking of your story -and that can be found in many others- is that even when you study what is supposedly what interests you then most , then you still feel sort of alone in taking this interest further. We all hope that things go in row in a natural way but on the contrary we often found that we need to tackle with several stops & go. Travelling can be illuminating for some. In my own experience, it all came around decisions to physically go somewhere else. good luck!

[alberto]

… not to mention money!

Giacomo, another potentially deadly feature of the education system is that it is too expensive (remember the riots in London when the government tripled tuition fees?), and many students now finish college with a significant debt burden. Italians don’t feel it so much, because college is still cheap in Italy, and above all, they live at home.

At some point we are going to run a consistent campaign about education. For now, the links provided by Noemi are certainly a good start!

[alberto]

… not to mention money!

Giacomo, another potentially deadly feature of the education system is that it is too expensive (remember the riots in London when the government tripled tuition fees?), and many students now finish college with a significant debt burden. Italians don’t feel it so much, because college is still cheap in Italy, and above all, they live at home.

At some point we are going to run a consistent campaign about education. For now, the links provided by Noemi are certainly a good start!

[rebecca]

Brilliant!

Hi Giacomo,

I just wanted to applaud your efforts in setting up this service - undoubtedly it will make a major difference to the futures of many young people who will use it.

I’ve been hugely fortunate to be part of a university system (Cambridge, UK) where both the University Careers Service and each individual college within the university has its own network of alumni (past students) who are willing to offer careers advice, mentoring, CV checks or work experience opportunities to students and recent graduates.  I revisited the network of my own college recently as I’m reaching a turning point in my career (I’m writing up my PhD) and, while I’m still full of anxiety as to what’s next for me, the reassurance that there were people I could ask questions of - whether that’s about publishing, government, the third sector or academia - did make the challenge of “what’s next?” that bit less daunting.

All the very best with your project - it deserves great success.