Growth

Personal growth 

As a person I believe to have grown in various ways. I think the biggest growth I’ve experienced would be socially. Constantly communicating with people from various cultures over a period of 5 months, increased my ability to easily make contact with people and to make others feel comfortable talking to me. I’ve become more comfortable in my communication with others and I noticed that I’m more interested in people that I don’t know than I was before. Social and communicative skills are very beneficial for my future life, both personal and professional and I aim to further improve these skills in the near future. I would say the people that I’ve met from all over the world also contribute to my personal growth, as my network has grown. Having contacts in many different places in the world is always very helpful for both personal and professional reasons as well. 

Lastly, I think I’ve grown to be more independent the last 5 months. As I didn’t meet classmates outside of school and most of my roommates were at their university during the day, I spent a lot of time by myself. Which at first was quite hard, as I easily got bored. However, after a while I decided to explore myself and learned how to be content when I’m alone. I started going to the gym, I got more carried away in photography, I set goals for myself and forced myself to stay busy during the day. Although this didn’t always go perfectly, I’ve learned how to be independent from others. I learned how to make my day a good day, without needing people surrounding me. Which is what I’m most proud of after this period.

Professional growth

Studying at URJC, I’ve improved my leadership skills most. As I am used to working with people who are natural leaders, I often did not take the lead and just played my part in group projects. Here however, I have worked with people who don’t take initiative and will not work until told otherwise. I’ve improved in preparing and leading group meetings, dividing work and setting deadlines in an organised and fast manner. With most Spanish students, if no one takes the lead, the meetings would go on for a very long time and have no clear outcome or plan of approach at the end of the meeting. Furthermore, I’ve gained experience in motivating people to do their work and to give feedback and criticism without feeling uncomfortable about it. Also, I learned more in receiving feedback from others. I’ve been very critical with myself too. If I felt like I hadn’t delivered or performed the way I should have or wanted to, I actively criticised myself for this and motivated myself to do better in the future assignments. 

The way I’ve grown as a young FM professional, mainly is a result of the poor facility management at the university. Most importantly, I learned the importance of well-organised indoor climate systems and sufficient cleaning systems. Since I have done my internship at a housekeeping department, I look at buildings differently, more critical when it comes to the cleaning thereof. Even though I’m not sure what the cleaning department looks like at URJC Vicalvaro, I can say that it is insufficient. Especially the toilets, which were never sufficiently cleaned. I was lucky if I would find a clean toilet with toilet paper. This is something that, as a Facility Manager I would have definitely taken care of, by coming up with a better working system. Furthermore, the thermal comfort at the URJC during the winter months were horrible. With the exceptions of the cafeteria and most office spaces, the entire building was very cold. Often it was colder inside the building than outdoors. Which is also something I would have changed if I was responsible.