05 May EU4EU Internship experiences during COVID-19: Raffaello Cesetti
Rome, 5 May 2021
Raffaello Cesetti is in his final year of a Master’s Degree in Finance at the University of Roma Tre. He carried out his EU4EU Internship at the Host Organization Irradiare, in Lisbon, Portugal, from October 2020 to the end of January 2021.
He first came across the EU4EU Programme thanks to a friend who was applying to the programme and recommended it to him. He contacted many Host Organizations in the EU4EU Portal and scheduled several interviews. What caught his eye about Irradiare was the Python programming language that they use. “For my future job in the field of finance, it is very important to know how to program on Python”, he says. He saw it as an opportunity to get acquainted with it.
At the beginning of his internship in October of 2020 the sanitary situation in Portugal was under control; everything was open and there were not many restrictions, but COVID-19 cases started rising again and the government decided to favour remote working. Due to these new restrictions, he only managed to work in the office for three weeks; then all the company started working from home, and every Friday, to have meetings, the team started using Google Meet. “Working from home is okay because you can distribute your time and tasks as you want, but I prefer working in the office because there is a different environment and you can get to know people better”, he comments.
His workday consisted of several tasks given to him by his tutor, “But I was very autonomous with my work”, he states. His main task was to create a programme to help with the elaboration of data, so it would be faster for the organization to find the information they needed. During his time at Irradiare, he highlights the good relationship with his tutor. “He taught me a lot. When I had some doubts he always replied very fast; I learned a lot with him”, he says. Thanks to his EU4EU experience he learned how to programme on Python and the use of softwares like Docker and Git that will be very useful in his future professional career.
Raffaello’s testimonial shows once again how the EU4EU Programme helps students starting their professional paths. Thanks to this experience, he had the opportunity to develop his skills and work for a foreign organization despite the moment of crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic.
