“While we quite often cannot control the opportunities, we are most of the time in control of our preparation.” - Faruk Bešlija, IUS Alumni Success Story
Upon completing his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Faruk stayed at IUS for one more year, simultaneously working as a teaching assistant and doing his Master studies and research in biomedical optics for a Canadian company in collaboration with IUS. As the project he was working on got cancelled, and he wanted to pursue his career in biomedical optics, he applied and got accepted for a PhD program at The Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona, Spain. Currently, he is in his second year of the PhD studies in Medical Optics group at ICFO. The group specializes in using diffuse light for probing deep into human tissue for monitoring purposes.
Read his story below!
To put it simply, we shine a light onto human tissue, we measure what comes back, and we can tell a lot about the state of the tissue. The primary focus of my work is related to diffuse optical monitoring in brain and muscle studies. For those who think that science is dull, one of the studies I participated in was on rock climbers. The work itself is dynamic and highly multidisciplinary, so we often collaborate with other institutions, research centers and hospitals. To the best of my knowledge, I am the first Bosnian at ICFO, and it is not as scary as it sounds. However, I would be more than happy to see this change at some point in the future.
When it comes to my experience at IUS, coming from the Math department at Druga Gimnazija Sarajevo, I was convinced that I would continue my studies at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering (ETF) at the University of Sarajevo, together with 50% of my classmates at the time. Meanwhile, in spring of 2014, we received an invitation for the scholarship testing at IUS and decided to go there out of pure curiosity. However, after a whole day spent at IUS, my perspective slightly shifted. Things I particularly liked were the overall atmosphere, as well as more personalized approach towards the student, compared to my previous education (yes, it was really possible to tell after a single day spent at IUS). That is when I started considering IUS as my potential destination.
My next step was to do research on IUS, as I really did not know a lot. Back then, IUS had existed for 10 years, and it did not have public exposure it received in the years to come Seeing what IUS achieved in 10 years of its existence, my choice boiled down to two simple options: first, a proven university, known for its excellence, but with somewhat rigid system and dull atmosphere, or second, a promising university, yet to be proven, but evolving at a much faster rate in a free-flowing environment. I went for potential, development, and freedom, and never looked back. I set for myself a scholarship threshold I would be happy with if I achieved it, and upon getting the results, everything was set for me to join IUS. Observed from this distance in time, it was definitely the right decision.
From my point of view, one of the most overlooked details among young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the importance of professional networking. In that sense, IUS contributed to my goals in three ways. Firstly, by providing the entire education in English, it resulted in more opportunities to expand my network, compared to my colleagues from public universities. Secondly, by having professors who obtained their degrees from respectable institutions in Europe/USA, we were often able to benefit as students from their connections worldwide and see the importance of these. Thirdly, IUS is perhaps the best institution in the country for student exchange opportunities. I remember the statistics from five years ago at the Erasmus program open day in Sarajevo, where the total number of exchanges conducted by IUS was equal to that of the University of Sarajevo! Keep in mind the number of students and the number of faculties at each of the universities.
You overcome the fear of failure by understanding that it is okay to fail. Actually, not just okay, but necessary and, sometimes even desired. We do not learn from the questions we answer correctly. More importantly, we do not get to ask the right questions if we do not fail enough. However, the key is not to dwell on the feeling of failure for too long without thoughtfully acting upon it.
All of us end up lost multiple times through the scope of our careers. Recently, I met a researcher who is a director in one of the sectors at the IBM. The impression that stuck on me during her talk was that the fear she had upon completing her PhD, or upon switching from academia to industry, were exactly the same as many of my friends experienced upon completing their Bachelor studies. The never-ending questions of “now what?” and “how do I do this?” will repeat themselves in different circumstances throughout our careers.
The possibility of failure will always follow us. Once when we embrace that possibility, we can start building failure prevention strategies by, firstly, identifying where we need to improve, and, secondly, through which channels and resources we can achieve that. My advice to current students would be, as Seneca said: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” While we quite often cannot control the opportunities, we are most of the time in control of our preparation. My advice to them would be to write down the things they would like to excel at, break them down to tangible, countable goals and keep a little promise to themselves to work on these consistently. Counting and tracking really takes people places.
