Är du nyfiken på hur det är att plugga på Chalmers? Här berättar alumnerna Lina och Martin om sina erfarenheter. Chalmers är en av våra samarbetspartners i Utställningen Unga Forskare.
My name is Lina and I’m a Chalmers alumni who graduated just before summer. After five years at Chalmers I get a bit emotional when I pass by campus as it has been five exciting years studying there. I’ve been studying the bachelor´s programme Business development and entrepreneurship as well as the master´s programme International Project Management. Today I’m working as a project management consultant at Sweco and I can really draw lessons learned from my time at Chalmers. 
Chalmers provides several societies and there are a lot of opportunities to get to know students at other programmes. During my last years I took the opportunity to represent Chalmers at student fairs and work with marketing for Chalmers. This gave me a lot of knowledge about the other programmes but I also practiced speaking in front of big audiences. People often think I am crazy when I say “I love doing presentations”. I think I have the practice to thank that for. If you have the possibility to engage in a society I really think it is a great way of gaining experience and increase your network.
Studying five years in a row requires motivation and structure but also time for recreation. My way of finding motivation and gaining energy for the semesters have been escaping to the Alps once in a while. During summers I have been working as a travel guide in Austria and during winters I have been enjoying the adrenalin and freedom of skiing. Finding a way to gain energy during your studies I believe is important as it gives you the motivation to stay focused. Working as a travel guide has not only been a way of taking a break from the studies but it has also given me leadership experiences which I find useful in my role as a project manager.
Signing up for five years of studies might sound overwhelming and believe me it can be sometimes. Celebrating all kind of achievement can therefore be a strategy of splitting up your studies into milestones. I found this method very useful and I took every chance I could to celebrate even the tiniest achievements.
Being a student at Chalmers gives you several opportunities for studying abroad. During my third semester at the master´s programme International Project Management, me and 13 classmates spent the semester at Northumbria University in Newcastle. Studying abroad gives you new perspectives and the opportunity to meet people from other cultures. In one of the courses my group existing of Swedes and Libyans made a newscast about project management. I have to say that spending a semester abroad opened my eyes of managing projects with members from different cultures – we might have different perspectives but we are all able to work towards a common goal. Using differences as opportunities instead of obstacles can create strong collaboration.
It would be a lie if I would say that I did not have a tear in my eye when I handed in my master thesis. Even good things come to an end. Today I work as a project management consultant within real estate and construction projects and I am also a part of a trainee program. If you have any kind of questions do not hesitate to contact me I’m just glad if I can help!
Lina
My name is Martin Skilbred and I just recently graduated from the master’s programme Electric Power Engineering at Chalmers. I will tell you about why I chose to study electrical engineering, what I filled my five years at Chalmers with and what I’m currently passing my time with today.
Back in August 2011, when I first started at Chalmers, I had zero clue what I was getting myself into. I had just been admitted to the Electrical Engineering programme and I honestly did not know what to expect. I’ve always been interested in the laws of physics and the wonders of mathematics, which was why I eventually chose the electrical engineering path. Other than that I was pretty clueless.
I’m soon going to jump in to talk about my master’s thesis and my involvement in “Engineers without borders” but first things first. I can’t talk about my time at Chalmers without mentioning the wonderful people I’ve met along the way. If you are about to start study at Chalmers or was recently admitted I must encourage you to get involved in the associations surrounding the student union. It’s a great way to meet people outside of your programme. I’m glad I did so!
My classmate Simon and I chose to do our master’s thesis for Engineers without borders. The Kolandoto hospital is located in the rural countryside of Tanzania and is as any hospital extremely vulnerable to power outages. The hospital is performing surgeries on a daily basis and people are traveling far distances to get help, which is why a reliable power supply needs to be in place. Simon and I traveled to Tanzania for two months in the spring of 2016 hoping to fix the problems that Kolandoto hospital was having with outages occurring on a daily basis.
Living and working in Tanzania was an experience. The culture, the people and the way of life, there is nothing like it in Sweden. We managed to design and set up an UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) with feeding solar panels. With help from local companies, personnel from the hospital and professional guidance from companies back in Sweden (Bergendahls EL, WSP) the resulting system turned out great! The hospital can now continue their daily operations without the fear of having the power cut off in the middle of a surgery.
I feel like I would need more words to describe my time at Chalmers up until now. But I’m going to end with where I now spend my daily time. When I graduated I started working for a consultancy firm in Gothenburg called WSP. The company is very diverse in its operations but what I do is to design high voltage equipment in power distribution systems. The company just recently agreed to a partnership with Engineers without borders which was one of the reasons I initially found interest in WSP.
Thank you for reading about my time at Chalmers, and don’t hesitate to contact me at Martin.Skilbred@wspgroup.se if you have any questions.
Martin