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So Many Talented People, So Little Opportunities
The reality of living in an “Emerging Country” That Will Never Emerge
That’s the main reason I left Brazil. After living in Canada as an international student with fluent English and international working experience, I arrived in Brazil in my early twenties looking for a job. I also had graduated from the best university in the country, USP. It didn’t mean anything.
My dream was to work for magazines and be a published writer. I wanted a job at Editora Escala. They used to publish weekly magazines, the salary at the time was 1,100 reais per month, which is £150, so you can see how low it was. The salary was low even for Brazilian standards, but I was looking for an opportunity to do what I loved professionally, and I didn’t get it. And I know I was qualified to do the job, maybe even overqualified. I kept applying, again and again… nothing. So I left.
After arriving in the UK, I was lucky to find a job in less than a month. A paid internship at a digital marketing agency. I was making £15,000 per year and “happy”, well kind of happy. I struggle a lot with my mental health, my self-belief and my worth. But a promise I made myself before leaving for Canada was to always try to find work within the field of communication/publishing; even it meant making sacrifices in…
