Like Chandler Bing, Phoebe Buffay or Ross Geller, no one told Paula life was gonna be this way. For whatever reason, fate brought this woman from Oviedo to the world’s largest particle physics laboratory. She left everything in Asturias, which saw her grow, train and reinvent herself. She grabbed her suitcase and she came alone to the surroundings of the Franco-Swiss border. It has been 6 years since then.
She studied Technical Mining Engineering in Mieres, and very soon she began to work in the industry on the shores of the Cantabrian Sea, in Gijón. At that time, the country was already saying goodbye to coal mines and the employment opportunities were scarce, but Paula decided to reinvent herself by jumping to another branch of Engineering. She did a master’s degree in International Welding Engineering in Gijón. She tried her luck at CERN right after, and she won.
To this day, she is still impressed by this huge laboratory and its performance. For her, it is fantastic that at CERN people with different nationalities, cultures, backgrounds and specialization areas collide, and that together they collaborate to carry lots of projects forwards. That cooperation capacity, that working style, has nothing to do with what Paula had experienced in the industry.
For Paula, being here, being a CERNie, is a dream come true. She does not consider herself very ambitious when it comes to fantasizing. Paula simply dreams of being happy, having a certain professional stability and continuing to enjoy her small big family, which grew a bit a few months ago with Casper, a 5-year-old French bulldog who climbs mountains at the speed of light.
The younger and crazier Paula from 2003 was already screaming for dreams like these ones, together with El Canto del Loco: “y vivir así, yo quiero vivir así”. This song brings her back very good memories, those that used to materialize from pub to pub in the nights with friends, when you had a good time and there were no worries lurking.
Paula, who enjoys horror films and the crime novels of Agatha Christie and Camilla Läckberg, defines herself as a simple person, something easy to say, but no to explain. For her, beauty can be seen from the beach, at sunset, or in the manufacture of new components. Although it is sometimes hidden behind many meetings, unforeseen events or ups and downs, there is no rival for the collective effort. That is why such a beautiful things always end up coming out.
She is an optimistic woman and she tries to apply a daily dose of “no hay mal que por bien no venga”, because although sometimes we do not want to see it, there is always something good around us.
Libertad en los ojos: / invadir la belleza / y meterla en un hombre. From these verses by Antonio Gamoneda, who was also born in Oviedo, our engineer thinks of freedom without restrictions and beauty as subjectivity.
As in Una foto en blanco y negro, “viendo la vida sin reloj”, Paula will continue to assemble challenges and the art of simplicity and tranquility. She will go on as if she knows there will always be a place for her in Monica Geller’s apartment.