International Relations,IIT Madras

My name is Shivam Damani and I am a 3rd year undergraduate student at the Department of Ocean Engineering, and I spent my 4th semester in Lisbon, Portugal’s best school for engineering, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa.

I always knew I wanted to do a semester abroad, but I was confused between where to do it. I happened to cross paths with some Portuguese students in IIT, and that’s when I knew it: I have to do my exchange in this country. The Portuguese people are some of the most friendly, crazy, entertaining and lively yet welcoming and honest people. They do know how to enjoy life and make the most of being a student.

Where I got my motivation: travelling in India with some exchange students (at Jog Falls)

After I got through with the paperwork and got my visa, I was good to go. I can still remember my first day in Lisbon – I was the first Indian to arrive, I knew no one and my dorm was also empty. I felt lonely and pondered what was in store, when I met my first few friends and they showed me how things work here. I quickly adapted to their habits and I also immediately started learning Portuguese – and I would recommend anyone to learn the language of the country they are travelling to – it is the best souvenir that you can gift yourself, something so permanent it becomes a part of yourself.

I eventually understood how classes work, and figured out all the courses that I would attend. Academically, the exchange was enriching because as a bachelor’s student at IIT, it is not hard to study for a quiz a few days before, not having attended lectures and still doing well. But at Tecnico, as I had registered for masters courses, we had a lot of project submissions which needed weeks worth of effort and dedication. I also felt that the learning was more thorough and I feel that this is something that could be implemented in our classes as well.

For the most exciting part about the semester, which was travelling, I had the best experience in Europe. (other than the stolen camera, scamming in Paris…) It is a common misconception that it must be really expensive to travel across Europe but it was genuinely not the case. It was quite affordable and sometimes unbelievably cheap – I went from Lisbon to Madrid for 2 euros, round trip! With proper planning and foresight, one can cover a lot of places and experience many different things. I managed to travel to 12 countries. I also did a 300 km cycle trip down the coast of Portugal – sleeping on whichever beach I liked!

I learnt some really important skills that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise – like money and time management and cooking. The most important lesson for me was to work really hard in the weekdays, and just completely turn everything off on the weekends and enjoy them. It was a great way of life! I found a new part of myself in Portugal, I was pushed out of my comfort zone so many times and the end result was always good.

After my experience abroad, it really felt like I had lived a lot more in one semester abroad than i did in three semesters at home – this was a true awakening and I decided to use this sign, and make every semester at home a semester worth remembering and talking about! If you would like to find out how you can also do an exchange, you can meet Mr. Harish, the outbound coordinator at the International Office, IC&SR, IIT Madras.