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Here's the story of my first month at CERN :) But first, a little premise...
Before arriving, I expected to be scared, alone and unguided in most of my experiences: after all I was a simple 19 year old about to leave home and friends for 3 years heading out in the world with zero experience on stuff like banking, taxes.. let alone working in a huge environment! The impostor syndrome was at an all time high on that front.
Then, I had the luck and pleasure to find an extremely competent and helpful plethora of people, ranging from my team to other CERNies (yes, that how we're called :P) who took me under their wing and introduced me to all the key aspects of living the place. When the initial stress finally soothed down thanks to this, I finally started to manage focusing more and more on my work, by following day-by-day my teammates who taught me the core aspects of the system and the many projects that are in progress during Long Shutdown 2. Within a couple weeks, I already managed to grasp various concepts that got me quickly on track, and now I managed to develop and integrate new temperature monitoring scripts into a system checking on hundreds of Single Board Computer-based servers :) It's a real rollercoaster of learning and applying under all fronts and so far I'm not regretting my choice of departing.
Luckily I've also discovered I'm pretty efficient and good at my job, which surely boosts my morale :D
Keep you updated as usual!

Comments
  • 8
    man, it must be so exciting to be working where it all started. looking forward to hear more.
  • 10
    Now don't go and create any black holes or ripping the fabric of space time. Okay?
  • 17
    Sorry, I just cannot resist:

    If you bring up issues at work, is it considered a con-cern? How do you dis-cern?
  • 4
    @jesustricks I wake up every morning with a smile :) Let me know if you wanna hear any particular story
  • 2
    @Demolishun Oh boi le jokes xD
  • 4
    So a convention for roasting scientists hosted at CERN would be called Dis-Con CERN, right?
  • 2
    @powerfulparadox Lmao I should do a formal proposal for this xD
  • 1
    @TheItalianGuy Hey mate :)

    I would also like to apply for the TTE and I have got two questions, if you don't mind me asking :)

    Did you go to CERN directly after graduating from highschool?
    Did a teacher of yours write your reference letter?
  • 1
    @404response Hello man :)
    Yep, I actually applied during my final months, and scheduled the beginning of my contract for 2 months after the final exam.
    As for the recommendation letters, yep, I've had two professors write them :) If you'd like to give them a read in order to get a better understanding of how they should look or contain, let me know
  • 1
    @TheItalianGuy hey, first of all I would like to say a huge thank you for all the advice and help :)
    I am going to graduate from highschool in June of next year and I wanted to apply within the next couple of weeks (before january).
    Do you think this is a reasonable time to apply?
  • 1
    @404response Anytime :) Currently the applications are closed I believe, but they open like 4 times a year so, as they just closed, I believe there'll be one more opening in November / December for this year :) So wait a bit, check the website https://careers.smartrecruiters.com/... and when you see a new deadline fire away!
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