My name is Jefson Alan Paz da Costa, born on September 23, 1984, in the city of Castanhal in the state of Pará - Brazil.

 

          Looking back over the past few years of my life, I can recall some of the most interesting facts relating to my schooling, my professional life, my professional life and even some personal events.

 

          I was raised from the first months of my life by my grandparents, on my father's side. My biological parents had separated and couldn't afford to raise "another child", at least, that's a reality I've chosen to believe to this day, because over the years, growing up among thirteen "brothers/uncles", I've gradually come to understand what really made my grandmother decide to put her name on my birth certificate.

 

          I was the youngest in the family. My "brothers", who were about my biological father's age, were always present during my childhood and gradually went on with their lives, while all my "mother's" attention was on me.

 

          Our family was simple. We weren't rich, our past generations didn't have wealth and depended on the land to make ends meet, so work was always a priority. My brothers, little by little, followed professions that they learned in life, on the job, and I'm proud of each one of them, they're examples that anything is possible, you just have to go for it.

 

          With my grandfather having abandoned me, my mother stood firm to support me and two other sisters who remained. I had to do my best at school, as I was the only one of my "brothers" who had the opportunity to continue studying in the 1990s. Even as a child, I already had this understanding, so due to certain difficulties, I had to choose to work at weekends, but this was no impediment to finishing my schooling. I wanted to be able to go to university, but my reality was very different.

 

          In 2003 I was called up for compulsory military service and, while I was there, I took the exam for Corporal in the 2nd Army. I was thinking of pursuing a military career, but the life of traveling to every state in the country every three months didn't appeal to me.

 

          In that same year, 2003, the first computer course in my town opened, and computers and the internet were new at that time, hardly anyone had access to them. The monthly course fee was very expensive, but with the help of my mother and my weekend work, we managed to pay for a few months and when I realized that things were tight at home, I would find a way.
 

          Ever since I was little, I've always loved drawing. My mother paid for an artistic drawing course for me at the end of the 1990s, and during that one-year course I improved my drawings a lot. Every night my mother would scold me for spending hours in the early hours of the morning drawing, I would lose track of time, turn on my radio very quietly, and I wouldn't even see the time go by and when she got upset with me the next day, I would please her with drawings of Jesus Christ. As this happened almost every night, there wasn't a Bible passage I hadn't drawn, so I started drawing the saints.

 

          My family has always been very religious. One day, the wife of one of my brothers took one of my drawings to a Catholic school, where they held their Christian meetings and, as there were nuns there, they ended up commissioning religious drawings. I was already lacking ideas for drawings for JC, so I drew so much, I tried to innovate with a version of JC with short hair and a goatee, until they said he looked more like Raul Seixas.

 

          Anyway, it was good, because those drawings helped us a lot during a difficult time and helped pay for the computer courses at the time. During the course, I realized that I was the only new student among people over thirty. I felt confused by this and even wondered if I was in the right place, but the feeling passed as soon as I sat down in front of the computer for the first time. From then on, everything was new, I saw infinite possibilities, a living art in digital form. How easy it was for me to learn the content, how easily and simply I could understand it. Without realizing it, I was helping my classmates to see everything in a simple way, so I knew that somehow the teacher could continue to teach more and more. Windows was 95 and 98, there was typing, Word and Excel 2000, accounting and the Internet.

 

          Having a computer at home was only for the rich, I couldn't afford it, no matter how much I tried to draw every night, I couldn't, because at the time it was a luxury and I knew it. There was only one thing I could do, and that was draw, and with my mother's help, we were able to pay for other courses that followed, because the evolution of computing grew and every year there was a new course, with updated content, new software, hardware, computer maintenance, network systems, everything related to computing, I always found a way to pay for more courses. These developments in the early 2000s consumed me in a way. I would stop by the newsstands every day to see if the magazines were publishing anything new.

 

          The courses I still have the certificates for were: basic and advanced computing, Windows 95 and 98 OS, Office Package, DOS, network configurations and systems, computer hardware and maintenance, Web designer, Corel Draw, Photoshop, Fireworks MX, Dreamweaver, Flash Player and other software that was being released at the time.

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          In 2004, LINKNET Informática, a dial-up internet access and hosting services company, opened a job vacancy in my town. It was the only company in the internet services market and there was no shortage of applicants, even people from nearby towns applied for the job. I never had any experience of a work contract, which was a requirement for the position, not least because my weekend jobs didn't have a work contract.

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          At the interview for the job, I was asked if I had any experience with the public. I was confused because I couldn't grasp the skills required in the IT area in relation to the public, but it was explained to me that they needed someone with the knowledge to support customers over the phone, and I ended up learning this experience in practice. It was my first challenge, and it wasn't that difficult, not least because it was almost the same as what I did on my courses, when I helped my colleagues learn something on the side, only now over the phone. It was an incredible experience and a challenge with clients who had no experience whatsoever with computers, being able to share by teaching them step by step how to solve their problems over the phone was very interesting. At that time, several training companies were starting to appear with new courses, one of which was the course for: Telephonist, Receptionist and Telemarketing and as it was in the evening, I took the opportunity and it was another course I completed.

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          At LINKNET, I had the opportunity to learn more about how the Internet was evolving. At the time, it was dial-up connections, but radio connections soon appeared. We had a physical server dedicated to hosting websites, all based on Linux and I had the opportunity to learn how a complete system worked, so I didn't waste much time and when I had a few minutes between one client and another, I started to put into practice what I had learned on the web designer course and began to create small website projects, structuring their entire layout from scratch, html root in notepad and templates with Dreamweaver, creating and editing images with Photoshop and small buttons in Flash and even complete pages and animations based on ActionScript. I made the most of learning everything in the company and did everything I could to keep up... and best of all, I got paid for it.

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          In 2005, I had to move to the state of São Paulo, I got a job in a surf store, they needed employees and didn't require much in the way of documentation such as proof of address, unlike companies in the IT area, which required specific documents for the vacancies they offered, and I needed to work anyway to support myself.

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          In 2006, under the influence of a work colleague, I took a course as a medical radiology technician, as the market was short of professionals in this area. During my internship, I was assigned to Grajaú Hospital, to the Traumatology department, and due to the occurrences I saw every day, I realized that this job wasn't for me.

In November 2007, I applied for a position as a computer teacher at a GIGABYTE vocational school. Although I met all the requirements, I had to prepare a 2-hour lesson for the teachers, coordinators and principal of the school as a final test. It was an anxious three days waiting for the call and tests from other candidates. When I received the phone call confirming that my place was guaranteed.

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          I'm very grateful for the opportunity I had at GIGABYTE as a teacher, because I was able to learn and share knowledge with the students, my work colleagues were practically brothers to me. It was a work environment where IT was everywhere, teachers from all backgrounds, both hardware and software. I learned something new every day, as IT continued to evolve. I taught basic computer classes such as the Office package (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Publisher) operating systems, secretarial work and administration, then I taught hardware maintenance and network systems, and web design classes (hosting servers, domains, FTP programs, HTML, WordPress, PHP with MySQL database, ActionScript, Photoshop, InDesign, Firework, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Corel Draw).

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          In January 2008, I started a bachelor's degree in Communication: Advertising at Uniban (União Bandeirante de Educação) in the evening, where I was able to further strengthen my knowledge in the field.

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          In July 2009, for personal reasons, I had to visit my hometown at my mother's request. She asked me to apply for a public exam, as she wanted me to be close to her. I dropped out of my course in São Paulo and applied for a job as an administrative agent in the urban zone of the state of Pará. While I was waiting for the public notice to come out, I got a job as a computer teacher at the Microlins vocational school. At that time, there were already a lot of companies in the area, but there was little demand and not enough students to complete an 8-hour day.

The public notice came out confirming that I would take office in 2012, so I couldn't stay in the city until then, so I went back to São Paulo, continued my course and went back to teaching at the GIGABYTE school.

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          In 2012, I finished the course in São Paulo and returned to my hometown to take up a public post as an administrative agent in the urban area. Here began my journey as a civil servant. I was assigned to the health department, in the communications sector, where I worked on countless campaign projects aimed at the health sector, including the creation of posters, pamphlets, flyers, magazines, banners, T-shirt artwork, billboards and video editing projects for local media.

In 2015, a proposal emerged for the construction of an extreme sports complex in the city, a project that began in the sports department, at the request of local athletes and supported by councillors and federal MPs. They needed a model for the initial phase of the project, ideas that would come from the athletes involved. I was transferred to the sports office to take notes of the athletes' ideas and draw up a 3D model of what the future extreme sports track would look like. At that time I was already doing parallel work on planned furniture with Promob studio software, 3D models of all kinds of furniture, and other building projects made by architects, where I was in charge of drawing up interactive 3D model presentations using SketchUp/V-Ray.

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          Between 2015 and 2019, at the sports office, I carried out all kinds of work related to publicizing sports event projects for social media, outdoor and video editing for advertising campaigns, with most of my time spent creating presentations in interactive 3D models focused on architecture. The time I spent working with 3D models was extremely important to me, as I realized that it was an area I could identify with a lot. In a self-taught way, I studied everything related to modeling and rendering, and was able to get to know different software that allowed me to continue working on projects depending on their complexity and editing time.

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          By 2019, I had enough knowledge to create projects involving image manipulation using Photoshop, vector creation with Illustrator and CorelDraw, website creation with Dreamweaver, Firework and WordPress, architectural project creation with AutoCad, architectural 3D creation with Promob studio, Revit, Archicad and SketchUp, and rendering engines with V-Ray and Kerkythea.

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          In April 2019, unfortunately, with prices rising and violence taking over, we decided it was time to risk a change that would change all our lives. We considered moving to Portugal in order to start our lives again from scratch and guarantee a better future for our daughters, but we had to leave them in the care of their grandparents, Alícia, aged 3, and Allana, aged 5. And so we left for Portugal, with our hearts squeezed, we couldn't risk a new world with them, because we didn't know what we would face, but we were sure that we were doing this to give them a better future, and we would do anything to guarantee it.

 

          In Portugal, without our papers ready, we had to adapt to all the changes we'd never experienced before in our lives: jobs, climate, a different culture and housing. The absence of our daughters meant that every day we had to do our best to bring them back to our side.

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          Because it was in the process of being legalized, many companies didn't hire people without residency, only in construction, cafés and other jobs that didn't require much of an immigrant.
 

          Between 2019 and 2021, I worked in construction, learned a new profession, we went through many difficulties, but with a lot of dedication, courage, strength, focus and faith, we managed to raise enough money to go to Brazil to bring our daughters back, I took the opportunity to see my mother again, and thank her for everything she did for me, even though she didn't remember me anymore, due to her stage 3 Alzheimer's disease. I was able to say goodbye and returned to Portugal with the happiness of being with my daughters again, and the sadness that I wouldn't see my mother again, when she passed away in 2022.

In 2023, already with all the documents, I found out that the IEFP would start a professional course for 3D digital design technicians, which I've always wanted to do, but never had the chance. And even with some difficulty, I manage to combine my studies with some freelancing.
 

          2024, I'm halfway through the course, dedicating myself to the maximum, remembering many things that time has made me forget, updating myself with programs, focusing more on 3D in architecture such as Revit, 3ds Max, Blender, Skt, Lumion, twinmotion and Corona, studying every day as I always have, preparing myself again for the job market in a safe and confident way, to continue on the mission of giving my family a better life.