I’m sorry, I can’t go straight to the agenda today before an honest disclosure to myself: there’s a part of me that feels ashamed about how long I took to simply acknowledge this fact. I know some are more self-conscious than others, but still.. I’m counting on it to be a process so I can accept it better as time goes by. Enough of venting.
I’m writing this near Christmas so this is an homage to all my UFPR colleagues that influenced who am I today. You can’t spend ~5 years with a group of people and remain unchanged, that would be naive. This text is about some areas that I recognize the influence and, as you can tell by the intro, there’s probably a thousand others areas I’m missing.
Lastly, I don’t like that generic “I won’t name any people because I’d risk forgetting some”, so I’ll definitely name a few. I encourage you to do the same. I’d be happy to read about it too, I’m genuinely curious on how you tell this story.
Context
UFPR is the university where I studied Embedded Systems. Classes were always at night (18h50 ~ 22h30). As a result, it lasts 6 years in total. It was built like this to fit the need of those who needed to work during the day.
I was not sure at all when choosing Embedded Systems. Much less of the impact of joining a group of people that were already doing their 9-to-5. I moved from the coast to the capital. My goal was study. That’s it. I’d share an apartment with 2 other colleagues up until I graduate.
The beginning
My early routine would be to go to university close to the start of the class then go back home. During the day, I’d probably play something online, review some of what we saw in class and that was it. That was similar to how High School looked like.
The more I got to know my colleagues, the more I realized how their routines were different. In hindsight, I’d say the vast majority did not have this luxury.
Jean
He was probably the first one I talked to and I’m glad we are friends until today. I remember the moment I was introduced to the definition of the verb se débrouiller when studying French, I could not think of anyone else other than him. It’s my mental alias.
He was always running errands to complement his income, be it related or unrelated to engineering. If Getting Things Done had to be personified in a person, that would be him.
As such, he was very practical and intuitive while I tend to be slower and more careful. I guess these traits also played a role on how well the partnership would go for the years ahead.
Rafael, Sena and Elton
They were my Holy Trinity. It goes without saying, but they were all hard workers too. They seemed to know each other beforehand and my memories are of a light environment, where they would always be joking at each other.
We’d laugh together gambling at which point in time during the class would Rafael sleep. The light environment was hiding the real meaning of the hard work I alluded to earlier: those people would wake up at 6 a.m. or earlier, do their 9-to-5 and come straight to university, often with 2-3 hours of commute per day. They were true heroes. To the non-Brazilians, although I’m using 9-to-5, in Brazil, that would be 8-to-6 or 8-to-7 in some cases.
Elton was the role model for me. Probably the smartest person I’ve ever met. The cliché kind of person you would think to yourself: “how can someone achieve this level?“. It was a true inspiration for me.
Sena is the kind of guy that joins any conversation and makes it more pleasant and funny. That’s natural to him. I’ll never forget that period on 2015 where we arrived at the campus at 6:30 am and left at 11:00 pm (more on this later on)
Marcos
We were not particularly close at UFPR, but he was the one that offered me an interview at Siemens, company that I still work. This opened so many doors for me. I really can’t thank him enough for his generosity.
Reaching the middle game
I had my first internship in my 2nd year, which is unusual comparing to other courses, but normal in my reality. Today, I credit this decision to the examples I witnessed in a daily basis from my colleagues. It is a positive pressure the environment gave me and I can’t thank it enough. It was delightful.
Think about which environments you put yourself in. Which kind of pressure are they applying on you and, if you had to extrapolate, where such a pressure will take you. I happen to be lucky to be driven in such a direction. The beauty is when you can consciously set yourself up for these successes.