Societies And Clubs, This Is Manchester

The majority of people I have met so far believe that a Job is the final destination after University. I don’t think so, even if that’s where I will end up ( I hope not). I think that in these three or four years of University, instead of thinking about getting a job, a student should think about his/her life. These are the best years of your life, the ones where you have a lot of spare time, the ones where you can meet as many people as possible and the ones where you can actually enjoy life.

That’s why I believe that University is about knowing ourselves, who we are, what we believe and what we want to give to our modern society. It can not be always about getting the best grades and the best job. It can not be always about getting a good salary, living for sixty years and then die (that’s a little bit depressing). It’s also about enjoying what you are doing, finding new things, discovering stuff you didn’t know and stuff you would like to know.

This is what Manchester has to offer, even if there are a lot of people thinking about their future job (why?), there are so many things you can do while studying, which can help you to differentiate yourself from the crowd. In my personal experience, I have been part of the swimming club here at the Acquatics Center ( one of the best pools I have ever seen). Even if I had never done competitive, I decided to give it a try and in the long term now I can say that I see results coming. I am still not at the level of the best guys and maybe I will never be, but I am improving, knowing different people, doing something else apart from studying and I am also getting fit (Oh yeah).

Before coming here I have applied to several top University in the Uk and even one in the US, but this University impressed me for the community that was built around it. With the biggest Student Union in the Uk, there are plenty of activities which you can do and there are plenty of sports. University is about enjoying the best years of your lives and that’s what I mean, studying is not everything, understanding people and learning how to interact with them is even more important.

Next year, I will also be the Operations Director at the Society of Accounting and Business(SOFAB), why? Simply because it is different from what I am doing. Remember, the first rule is to differentiate you from the crowd. Be different, think different and don’t do what the other Computer Scientists do.  Another practical reason can be found in the simple fact that with that role you can know a lot of people who are not in your circles of interest, which means having more connections spread on different fields of interest, which means “valuable connections” that can help you at any moment.

I hope you will come to our SOFAB meetings next year, just to see a different point of view, a different perspective and different people. Life is like an Entrepreneurial journey and yes, I am not going to sit on a chair for the next sixty years, even if I will be over paid by a corporation.

The final destination is not a job, but it is happiness.

Ibiza 2012 - You have to sleep if you don't want to be like me

ps: The best is yet to come…

Let The Blog Begin

Writing on a blog is not the easiest thing in the world. There are always lows and highs in your blogging career and the more you blog, the more you get new followers. This is going to be my first blog post ever on this website, and it is going to be the first of a long series.

When I firstly read a blog post from a blogger I always want to understand, before reading, what kind of person he/she is, because I believe that a blogger is free and is able to say whatever he/she wants from her point of view. That’s why a good understanding of the blogger’s preferences can always help you while reading his/her blog posts.

This is why I am writing two lists in my first blog post, the likes and dislikes. Lists are the most powerful tools a blogger can use and here I am going to use them just to describe my personality and way of behaving.

Likes

  1. GNU/Linux and Richard Stallman
  2. Entrepreneurship
  3. Swimming
  4. Innovation
  5. Startups
  6. Isaac Newton
  7. Direct Democracy
  8. The Five Star Movement
  9. Freedom
  10. People who don’t lie to me

Dislikes

  1. Redundant people
  2. Dictatorship
  3. Ideologies
  4. Quentin Tarantino and DJango
  5. English weather
  6. People who do not comment my Blog
  7. Cheaters
  8. Huge corporations who copy innovators
  9. Two of the biggest tech companies in the world (Guess..)
  10. The Italian way of doing things (It can be the best or the worst)

Well, these two lists could have been pretty long, but I wanted to give you a first taste of what this blog is going to be about. I extremely love writing about Entrepreneurship, Startups, Technology and what I really think the world should be; but on the other hand, I would like to record the experience I am getting here at the university of Manchester, where I will enjoy the best years of my life.

The conclusion of a blog post is always something embarrassing, I could have stopped writing in the last paragraph with that great sentence about the best years of my life; but today, I want to write down two quotes which have inspired me along these years. The first one has helped me a lot, the latter is more recent, but it helped me understand how the world works.

“If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants”.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

They have always told me that less than five hundred words for a blog post are not much, but this is it for today, see you in the next blog post.

Let the hack begin.