Tomáš Titěra

Our scholarship holder 2014 – 2017

University

Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

Field of study

Komunikace a média

Contact

tomas.titera@gmail.com

Open Gate graduate in 2014

Following the first five years of primary school, I experienced a turnaround that has literally opened the gate to the future for me. Having passed the admission procedure, I started to attend the Open Gate eight-year grammar school, which I completed with a Czech school leaving examination and an International Baccalaureate in 2014. Thanks to the kind and generous support provided by The Kellner Family Foundation, I have had opportunities to develop my academic and social skills in many respects in the modern and dynamic environment of the bilingual grammar school.

In addition to learning, I also worked for the community at Open Gate: in 2012, I was elected chairman of the Student Council; my competences included communicating with the school’s management and organizing cultural events for the school’s students. I was also in charge of promotion and communication with the media for a project called Nobel Peace Prize for Sir Nicholas Winton. As part of this petition campaign, I could get the feel, at least a little, of how the media world works at the professional level, even as media had already been of great interest to me for some time. It is also thanks to this experience, together with my enthusiasm for languages, that I decided, encouraged by The Kellner Family Foundation, to study a discipline entailing information transmission and inter-personal communication in both their formal and everyday informal forms.

Secondary

Open Gate grammar school, graduated in 2014

University

Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, NL, since 2014

E-mail

tomas.titera@gmail.com

Goals

Short-term: adjust to the new environment smoothly and master the basics of Dutch. Long-term: become well-established the field of communications and media in a job both meaningful for me and beneficial to society.

Interests

Learning languages, reading, guitar playing and music in general, light hiking, organizing summer camps

My articles and what has been written about me

All articles

Universities

06/30/2017

Over and out

So, that’s it. I’m a bachelor of science. What can I say – no extreme celebrations, life goes on and I don’t feel like a different person now. Nevertheless, I can’t avoid the feeling of reaching a certain milestone in my life. The time has come to say good bye to the Netherlands – a marvellous (but sometimes also very peculiar) country that I’ve had the privilege to call home for three years. It is often the case we learn to appreciate things to the fullest only once we are about to lose them.

Universities

03/02/2017

Final Countdown

„Time flies!” – As part of preparations for today’s post I took a look at the texts that I’ve written on this blog so far and realized that almost all of them include some variation of this proclamation. I’m afraid I can’t avoid this truism this time either as there doesn’t seem to be anything to describe my feelings more suitably. I moved back to Rotterdam from Vienna only a month ago, but it feels like it’s been at least a year. When I look into the near future, four months ahead of me there is a milestone in the form of my bachelor thesis – this feels actually even more shocking to me.

Universities

11/21/2016

Erasmus in “Košice”

I often get asked about the reasons why I have chosen Vienna as my Erasmus destination – it is far from being exotic and it is also three times closer to Prague compared to Rotterdam.

Universities

06/30/2016

The Views

“Tell me what you see from your window and I’ll tell you who you are.” If that common saying went like this, I suppose I wouldn’t be an easy piece for someone who’d want to diagnose my personality this way. Within the last three months, the everyday scenery behind my windows has changed for several times. I’ll be happy to share some of them with you.

Universities

02/29/2016

Beginning of the Second Half

Last month I “celebrated” one of the milestones of my university career – by completing the qualitative research methods exam, my bachelor studies have officially swung to their second half. As much as the first fifteen months could be described as clearly defined steady progress, I suppose that the other half will be a bit more turbulent.

Universities

11/17/2015

On a scale from one to ten, how depressive is it to live in Rotterdam?

“Rotterdam as the most depressing place to live”. That was the basic premise of my not-so-serious project for the seminar Social media, prosumption and identity that I took in the first term of my second year.

Universities

06/30/2015

Frankfurt am Main, 4:52 AM

In the last ten months I have spent almost one week in buses on the route Prague – Rotterdam and back. Some of the drivers already remember me by name and I suppose that if there won’t be any positive development in terms of air connection between the two cities in the upcoming months, we will be on a first name basis by Christmas.

Universities

02/27/2015

On the border between the second and third phase

In the last two months, I have twice took the bus from Prague to Rotterdam. On both occasions, I had mixed feelings – on the one hand, I felt like I was leaving home, on the other hand, I felt like I’m returning home.

Universities

11/12/2014

Rain, chocolate sprinkles and first exams

It’s been only two months since my bus arrived on the Rotterdam Centraal Station and I already slowly became turning into a true Rotterdammer.

Open Gate

11/19/2013

Student Tomáš Titěra: Open Gate is not a snobby school

Student Tomáš Titěra: Open Gate is not a snobby school
He was often bored at his desk in elementary school, even though it was a selective Prague language school. He believed that Open Gate, which was recommended by his teachers, was a boarding school for the rich only. Then he changed his opinion and spent eight years there with support from The Kellner Family Foundation. He spent his last year at Open Gate preparing for the International Baccalaureate and continued studies in the Netherlands. Read all his thoughts here.

Open Gate

11/19/2013

This is not a snobby school

For many it is an unattainable goal to study at a good high school. Many children live in difficult social environments, incomplete families or children’s homes; they do not have sufficient funds and they even lack support from those surrounding them. They nevertheless long for a good education and for making their dreams a reality. The Kellner Family Foundation – a foundation of Mrs. Renáta Kellnerová and Mr. Petr Kellner – has helped hundreds of such children. Thanks to the foundation’s grants, they can study at the prestigious Open Gate eight-year grammar school.