by Stefano Benatti | Nov 19 2024
Me trying to go for my morning walk and my cats spoiling it by meowing all the way
Thanks for reaching this space and reading on my random ramblings! I guess if you are here is because you are interested not only about what I have to say but also in who I am and what I did, so apologies in advance for getting incredibly personal and verbose. As people have already mentioned I like the sound of my own voice and words too much đ.
Anyway, this (nice looking) dude here is me at 38. Currently living in Brazil at a farm, close to SĂŁo Paulo in a small city that exports flowers, and strawberries, and is known for its nice weather. Certainly could do a lot worse as a place to live!
Apologies for not mentioning much about my family, but I prefer not to expose them too much as they are low key in social media, but I am married and have an amazing bright and happy son.
If you are wondering about the farm products, I do have cattle, chickens, koi fish, and also pine trees which I extract resin from. Ah, also since it is located in SĂŁo Paulo state, it has a lot of protected areas of Atlantic Forest, which is incredibly beautiful and I am glad there are strict environmental laws around to keep it as such (at least in this region it does). I also tried growing coffee beans and corn, but Iâm honestly not very good at taking care of plants - animals are a lot easier since they signal when they are thirsty đ¤Ł.
Now onto more interesting things about myself past where I live:
If you are unfamiliar with Brazil, then a few important things to be aware of:
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I imagine you are here due to my opinions, so of course I believe violence and inequality are deeply related, as high inequality and corruption coupled with unattainable wealth leads to violence and illegal means of obtaining wealth
This is especially true in large cities, and the main reason (coupled with the transit) why I moved away from living in SĂŁo Paulo as soon as I could, as the countryside is nowhere near as violent (but still corrupt đ¤ˇââď¸)
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Now with some basic knowledge of the context, I believe my journey will make more sense. Coming from a white family of rich immigrants, most of which settled in Brazil between 1920 and 1945 (I wonder whyâŚ) coming from Italy and Germany, and living in the biggest economic hub of South America (SĂŁo Paulo), I had a good upbringing as âmedium classâ. I went to private schools, which are generally better from an education standpoint than the free public counterpart due to higher investments into staff, buildings, books, and equipment. Although Brazil has a 10% population that identifies as black, there were only a couple of them in the schools I went to, and usually either staff or students with scholarships.
I also was quite smart, so coupled with a good education it allowed me to study in the most prestigious university of South America: Universidade de SĂŁo Paulo. Now, the plot twist, is that while during primary and high school the best education in Brazil comes from the private sector, on the university level it shifts entirely, with the public state/federal ones being the best by far, and opposed to other countries, they are not only completely free of charge, but they also provide support for living and food needs for those who cannot afford. However, they have a difficult entrance exam that is very competitive with a 150:1 ratio of applicants to students, which gets a lot worse for more popular courses and covers all areas of education in a few days.
As you can infer from the above, albeit public universities are free, most of the people who join do come from private schools as they have better education that helps them prepare for the entrance exam. However, there is certainly more diversity in terms of economic backgrounds within public universities compared to private schools, as some incredibly smart and hard-working people from public schools make it as well. Brazil is also quite a large country (5th largest in the world), and those public universities aggregate people from all over it, as well as foreigners, which makes it incredibly rich in terms of cultural exchanges.
And of course, this experience was life-altering, as for the first time I was meeting and talking with others that came from less privileged backgrounds and other regions, and began to understand a bit better - not only in theory but with faces - how things are outside my bubble. I first went to study Eletrical Engineering at POLI (Escola PolitĂŠcnica). I chose engineering because as a 17-year-old, I knew I liked to build things (both from playing with Lego and some Robotic high school competitions I attended) so it seemed like a choice to build stuff professionally.
I soon realized however, that I hated electromagnetism (from a math perspective), as until this point I could both understand and infer all physic formulas myself but eletromag didnât click, and I came to the realization that what I really liked was Algebra and Algorithms. And it also didnât help that a lot of the acclaimed Engineering PhD teachers were huge assholes that didnât care to teach at all, and only did it as it was mandatory in order to conduct academic research with masters/PhD students. The final nail in the coffin is that I really think the Dilbert comics and The Office series described quite accurately the type of work opportunities available for engineering graduates. So I decided to ditch Engineering (to the dismay of my entire family and friends) and went to do the entrance exams again and successfully entered the same university once more, but this time for a Computer Science course that was more aligned with my interests and cultural expectations. I never finished either mind you, but more about why later, this is good enough for the background character setting.
While I studied in the same university campus for both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the environment, people and culture couldnât have been more different. I think a picture of the department buildings explains a LOT:
To the left, is the Math Institute that lectures Computer Science and to the right the Electrical Engineering one. The Math building was very close to the architecture one, so I met and worked with several architecture students who taught me a bit about it. Namely, building architecture has a big impact on how people use and live in the spaces, and from the pictures it's clear that while Math has higher freedom of movement, better transparency, natural light sources, and a garden, Electrical Engineering is quite restrictive, dark, obscure and focused on parking. And that truly reflects how daily life was at each. No wonder so many people suffered from depression during their time in Electrical Engineering, just entering it gave you literal chills due to all the concrete and lack of sunlightâŚ
From a cultural aspect, while in the Math Institute teachers and students were very idealistic, since it offered several purely academic and licentiate degrees aside from CS Bachelor, Engineering was generally more focused on market needs and trends and stayed away from politics. There was also more collaboration on the former, and more competitiveness on the latter due to grades having an impact on the engineering specialization that was chosen at the end of the second year.
Surrounded by very smart and idealistic people, I couldnât help but be inspired by it. Realizing my own privilege and having a top-notch college education for free, I became driven to give it back to society. Aside from taking part in student organizations including being one of the founders of a socialist political party, I became a volunteer math teacher to help prepare high school students from low-income households for college entrance exams. Due to lack of funding, the place I volunteered at closed about 4 months later, but from this very short experience, it became clear to me that: