A university college is not a hostel that only offers room and board, but a place of human growth through continuous comparison, and sometimes clash, with the experiences of others, the testing ground that helps manage the almost absolute freedom that the university student enjoys away from home, directing students towards cultural and recreational initiatives of various kinds. As for my experience, I underline the birth of great friendships, the endless chats, the sharing and the release of tension for an exam!
100/100 from the Liceo Classico named after Simone Weil, located in Treviglio. With these credentials, Marianna arrived in Pavia in 1999 to enroll in Philosophy. The latest issue of "Nuovità" shows the image of the Graduate Residence, recent expansion of the Collegio Nuovo. Perhaps Marianna is already wondering what her future will be, but in the meantime, to begin with, in her second year she takes advantage of the College's exchange with the University of Heidelberg and attends the Internationaler Ferienkurs, according to a tradition especially among female students of Classics and Philosophy. The College, in addition to assigning her a free place for the entire cycle of study, also supports her in other experiences abroad, first for an Erasmus in Strasbourg, then, after graduation, for a study sojourn at New Hall, College of the University of Cambridge with which the College has a partnership agreement and where she also lands as the winner of a scholarship awarded by IPE, a member of the Colleges of Merit. Here she developed a desire for Europe which led her to receive, again from the College, a contribution to follow the Master's degree in European Studies at the Collège d'Europe in Warsaw.
Among the first challenges
Among the first Nuovine IUSS graduates (in the photo above, in the centre, the IUSS founder Roberto Schmid), Marianna well deserves all these recognitions which are the basis for new challenges: "Ten months to study the European Union and to experience it in contact with young people and girls from all over Europe, from Lisbon to Moscow, from Tbilisi to Paris. I am representing Lombardy, having arrived with two tools that will prove extremely useful: my philosophical background and my experience of college life in Pavia. The name of the master's degree, "European Interdisciplinary Advanced Studies", only vaguely gives an idea of the amount of work that awaits me. […] Deadline, in reference to term papers and presentations, becomes one of the most frequently spoken words…” ("Nuovità", n. 17)
Today
“'And where do you imagine yourself in five years?'. Certainly not to talk about my work experience to the Nuovine, it makes me think now. The risky conjecture expressed at the time, during the hiring interview, would instead prove prophetic: 'In five years I will have accumulated the necessary experience to be put in charge of a small team of analysts'. And so it was." ("Nuovità", n. 17). Since 2008 Marianna has been leading a team of analysts at the Institutional Shareholder Service Service, Brussels office, which opened immediately after her internship, and since 2014 she has also been appointed Vice President. Since 2017 she has been Head of Custom Research – UK and Continental Europe.
Her advice
Imagine alternative routes. “Someone will perhaps wonder how it is possible to land a similar job after a degree in Philosophy. Several answers come to mind: it is first of all a work of research and investigation, and the analytical ability developed during a humanities degree course, combined with the habit of quickly 'digesting' an impressive amount of information in a short time time, they are indispensable assets”. (Nuovità, n. 22)
