Eighteen faculties have welcomed students from the 3rd cycle of basic education and secondary education.

The goal is to create as many activities as their thoughts already reach, and to clarify any doubts that may still exist when we ask them what future they will choose.

On 28 and 29, the Rector’s Office opened its doors and an unparalleled number of students spread over two floors. Each day more than 1000 students came to see their future at the University of Lisbon.

Whereas the Rector’s Office is usually kept in privacy and silence, today this is not possible. There are groups sitting on the stairs, others clustered on sofas and many more divided between spaces where each represents his own Faculty. While everything is happening simultaneously, Rector António da Cruz Serra gives an interview to an internal channel of one of the communication teams and neither the noise nor the arbitrary circulation of the youngest people disturb his logical and always prompt speech.

The Faculty of Medicine is on the first floor, and Nair Correia of year 2 explains what it is like to be a student of the Integrated Master Degree in Medicine and Oureana Ferreira talks about the joys of her new Nutrition Sciences Degree. High school students are in a hurry and want to know how long they need to be Paediatricians. Nair looks amazed and tells them "calm down, you have to do so many things before you get there... But don't be scared, the degree is difficult, but not impossible". At this point, they look really scared, because they are not aware that to reach the end, it is necessary to study years of something called specialty. Nair reinforces, “this is the best degree there is, because we are going to save lives in the hospital!”. The screen opposite the FMUL’s stand shows videos of the Medicine Evening. One of the Communication staff of the Faculty, Catarina Monteiro, explains, “the kids love to see these hits of Medicine Evening, but we also show a sequence of videos prepared by the AEFML, the Students' Association, and also the official videos of the Faculty and Nutrition”.

Right next to the screen, there is another great distraction that we call Zé, it is an Anatomy dummy that shows all human organs up to the end of the intestine. Catarina invites the boys who flock to look at the anatomical model to play a game, "whoever knows what organs these are and how they fit together, wins a present!". The challenge begins and I start asking which organ they hold in their hands, “the liver, of course”, but after all the assemblage sequence does not go well. Another boy warns that for the liver to fit, the stomach should already be in place and tries to gain ground to be the one to perform the arduous task. But the advice is not well received, "hey, don't push me, I will do it now". Zé dummy has suffered some squeezes, but he endured the “surgery” and the test was passed and all received yellow pencils with the Faculty’s symbol.

 

The world is too small: a former spinning teacher from a gym where half of the Faculty practices appears before my eyes. PT Raquel left the gym, but she teaches Physical Education and coaches the youngest, and she is also a Psychologist. She brings a group of girls who, being in the 9th grade, almost all of them already know that they want to choose Sciences, a few are certain that it will be Medicine; what I come to realize is that Professor Raquel herself, after all, also ponders that same training for herself, “my father died 2 months ago and I don’t let my energy break, I just want to embrace new projects, Medicine can be the next”.

 

Isabel Varela is from the Faculty's Communication team and this year she is coordinating the Fair, having planned everything to properly represent Medicine in the Rector’s Office. “In this group here, who knows what a dynamometer is?” Everyone seems to know because they immediately explain that it is enough to grab it to measure body strength. Isabel encourages them to see if the girls are stronger than the boys and they laugh, not the girls. But the girls are the first to take the test and the values exceed the average strength attributed to the female group, followed by boys who are already scared and refuse to press. Isabel insists, “are you going to run away now?” Challenged to prove bravery, they squeeze with superhero strength, some break records, but there are those who got the lowest value ever of any girl, “I squeezed badly for sure”, said one red in the face. It was when Maria Juca, winner of this strength contest, tells me her secret, “I am a professional athlete in Sporting and I do pole vault”.

 

It is 12 o'clock and it is the second day of Discover. The day before, the nutrition and ENT workshops had a strong impact, and only because of that the organization had to prohibit free access to places, a record never seen before. We would now attend a suture workshop, given by surgeon Ana Cristina Lavado. The crowded room was barely breathing, there were dozens of students standing, others sitting, many with caps ready to go to any operating theatre. After an eloquent explanation about the history of the surgeon's role and anaesthesia over the centuries, Cristina Lavado launched the challenge, “who wants to do a suture?” It was a provocative challenge for those who could barely fit in the room. She was calmly saying that “maybe not everyone can, but you keep trying”. Distracted, beside me, two boys hurried to break the line to get to the sutures first, "put this blue thing on your head", said the sharper one. The other had finally put “that weird blue thing on his feet” in total amazement, being the target of laughter and a new explanation that “the caps are for the heads and the foot protectors are for the feet”. Looking confident with what he had heard seconds earlier about the importance of disinfection, he put the foot protector on his head. He was ready for surgery.

 

I left the room, now the moment was theirs.

Outside, next to the toilets, some took the opportunity to date and others slept peacefully on the sofas, while the musical tuna from the Faculty of Law played the tambourine and leapt effusively, perhaps trying to convince the visitors that the Law Degree is also fun.

 

Time was up, what a pity. One is proud to see how they hold on and dignify the Faculty so much and how those who join it inspire us to never stop laughing when we look to the future.

New meetings will take place soon, at Futurália in FIL and later at Qualifica in Porto. And part of this team will be there, persistently, because more than the loud yellow jersey they wear, they have the inner will to take their own institution further and further.

 

Joana Sousa
Editorial Team