After the sessions, the organizers invited participants to a welcome social lunch, during which three dishes of Catalan and Valencian cuisine were served.
Each day, after the first three hours of class, the organizers provided a shared lunch break – a one-hour social gathering for participants and instructors from all course groups, with cold and hot drinks and snacks served at one of the patios on campus. This gave us the opportunity to meet new people every day and establish both professional and personal contacts.
The IT classes I attended were predominantly practical. The instructor presented cybersecurity issues in a multifaceted and multidimensional way, while the participants simultaneously carried out specific tasks in the discussed environment. As a result, we could immediately experience the undesirable consequences of our actions, since executing some commands triggered a “stress-test” scenario – something we were not informed about in advance. This kind of “shock therapy” helped me quickly adopt desirable behaviors and avoid incorrect ones, allowing me to use the acquired knowledge and skills more safely when operating IT tools in my future teaching and research work.
A very student- and staff-friendly practice at UPV is that academic classes start at 9:00 AM, and there is a university-subsidized canteen on campus where both employees and students can eat throughout the day for a symbolic fee. This is exactly the kind of solution that I not only dream of seeing implemented at Fire University, but also hope to witness during my professional career. 🙂
On the last day at UPV, right after the end of the course sessions, the organizers held a farewell lunch in the form of a banquet, where a wide variety of typical Catalan – and especially Valencian – tapas were served. We were also given containers to pack and take home any leftover tapas, allowing us to enjoy the local cuisine a little longer and fondly remember our stay at UPV. And that’s exactly how I’ll remember it – especially since during those 25 hours of classes, I not only learned a great deal, but also had the chance to practically test many important IT solutions relevant to the academic profession.
