[WattsWand]

What advices do you guys have for a 17yo who just finished High School?

I'm from Sao Paulo, Brazil. 6ft tall, white skin, green eyes, i'm learning game since I discovered RVF. I'm reading a lot. I speak portuguese, spanish (I lived in Chile) and english. I have 2 plans/strategies:

- go to university/work . Get an engineering degree + MBA, work at a bookstore, club or bar while studying. Then travel while working as an engineer or business administration in Australia/NZ/SEA/Europe.

or

- learn some freelance skills like web developing, seo, ux, coding and travel to SEA, Australia, NZ. Then I don't know what to do to make money when the traveling ends or what career to build.

I want to surf on my free time (I can't surf while living in Sao Paulo), play guitar (I play guitar for 10+ years) and hit the gym, work on my physique. I don't think I'll have time to surf or play guitar as an engineer.

If you need some tips/advices about Sao Paulo, ask me.

[the-dream]

Assuming that doing so isn't going to get you into a crippling amount of debt, I'd recommend carrying out all of your plans. You seem to have some great plans which will set you up for an awesome life.

I'd say go to university for Engineering first and work on building a web business in your spare time. Graduate and then try and travel to the places that you'd really love to visit and maybe stay in some great surf spots for an extended amount of time, teaching at a surf school or doing something to sustain yourself. Go home and try working as an engineer and if you're getting wanderlust and yearning for your time abroad again, start saving as much as possible and try and find a way to leverage your practice at working online to something profitable and make the jump to being self employed.

By the time you'd done all that, you'd still only be maybe 23 and have had a variety of amazing experiences in your life that most people twice your age wouldn't have done and be set up to be very successful at one or more paths in life!

[Cr33pin]

I recommend you find a social circle of smoking hot Brazilian girls who love bearded American men. Once you accomplish that shoot me a pm and I will tell you the rest of the plan.

[WattsWand]

Thank you for the advices, I think I'm going to study engineering while learning freelance skills and then travel. I read one of your threads and you said that you have been running a 850/month online business (congrats), how did you start it and how is it going today? We're lucky to be learning from this forum at such young age. Happy new year!

[Randy Antilles Mk2]

I can't say much pick up a hobby that is related to your engineering skills.

Like you say you play guitar, why not learn to build a guitar amp.

Which in fact may lead into a business.

[komatiite]

At my American school (petroleum engineering) we always had big waves of Brazilian students come up to study. I was paired up with one guy in a lab class and he was from Manaus, I forget the university name but it had the word Amazon in it.

Either way it sounded like a sweet deal, they could come up on Brazilian Government dime and study at our school for one semester. They didn't really care about their grades, for them it was pass or fail, so they either partied a lot or would go on lots of cool trips. They would get two study abroad semesters during the course of their degree so he got eight months of study at two American schools. Sounded pretty awesome! Make sure you look into that at whatever school you decide to study Engineering at in Brazil-- maybe there are some sweet Exchange programs you can do.

[Ringo]

(01-01-2017 02:19 PM)komatiite Wrote:  

At my American school (petroleum engineering) we always had big waves of Brazilian students come up to study. I was paired up with one guy in a lab class and he was from Manaus, I forget the university name but it had the word Amazon in it.

Either way it sounded like a sweet deal, they could come up on Brazilian Government dime and study at our school for one semester. They didn't really care about their grades, for them it was pass or fail, so they either partied a lot or would go on lots of cool trips. They would get two study abroad semesters during the course of their degree so he got eight months of study at two American schools. Sounded pretty awesome! Make sure you look into that at whatever school you decide to study Engineering at in Brazil-- maybe there are some sweet Exchange programs you can do.

He was probably from UFAM - Universidade Federal do Amazonas.

That sounds like a scholarship from a federal program called Ciencias sem Fronteiras (Science Without Borders). Very good deal indeed if you are focused on technology/industrial businesses.

OP, if you want to go the University way, work hard and get accepted in a public Uni in a major city or wherever else that offers a good program and the city doesn't suck (I chose USP and stayed in Sao Paulo, although I kind of regret it). This is a must if you want to be financially independent from your family asap and will leverage your skills and curriculum considerably.

[WattsWand]

Ringo, did you study engineering at USP? I visited POLI-USP but all the students looked like they have no clue on how to socialize (highly technical knowledge tho), they have no free time at all and I know engineers who studied at PUC-SP/Mackenzie that are making big money through networking/ecommerce/sales... So I'm not sure if a good diploma (USP) is worth the time and effort (minimum of 6 years studying like a freak).

[Ringo]

(01-01-2017 04:24 PM)WattsWand Wrote:  

Ringo, did you study engineering at USP? I visited POLI-USP but all the students looked like they have no clue on how to socialize (highly technical knowledge tho), they have no free time at all and I know engineers who studied at PUC-SP/Mackenzie that are making big money through networking/ecommerce/sales... So I'm not sure if a good diploma (USP) is worth the time and effort (minimum of 6 years studying like a freak).

No, I studied at ECA (don't want to give out too much about my background, but we can discuss via PM).

The average engineering student is a nerd most of the time, gets shitfaced on the weekends and tries to score. This is standard, at least here in Brazil, and the fact that the male to female ratio is so skewed only reinforces that.

You seem to be an athletic guy. If you enjoy competition, join the Atletica (sports teams) in whatever sport you enjoy the most. Poli has one of the best Atleticas in USP and that will help you make friends and socialize with fit girls.

Yeah, studying at USP is no joke. If I'm not mistaken the engineering degree requires full time studying for the first couple of years, with classes throughout the day. You would 100% have more free time if you joined some place like Mackenzie, although I don't know if their curriculum offers all the fields of engineering as USP does. But if free time to invest in your own business is more important, then that's a no brainer.

Having said that, USP is an absolute hotspot for talented professors and students. Great for networking. Most of my friends from Poli now work in banking and make decent cash (R$5k as interns, 8-10k as lower level employees).

[rudebwoy]

Not sure what type of engineering you do, here in Canada there are many engineers out of work.

I am sure the situation is more favourable in your country.

I would get a degree from a good school, just to get that out of the way.

Anything you can do freelance to make money, like coding is a great skill. Something you will be thankful for in the future.

As a guy who is way older than you, working for a corporation absolutely sucks balls.

[monerap]

Learn useful skills. Online marketing, FB ads, Google Adwords, copywriting, design, etc. Learn the skills that will help you to work anywhere in world with your laptop. Don't go to college.

[fagnoni]

Fala, caro paulistano!

I wouldn't bother with USP. Indeed I think it's not worth the effort (it will be a major effort even to get admitted in the vestibular, and TBF, most technical knowledge you will learn will be mostly useless and you quickly forget everything after some time in the real world). I would go for a top engineering private school like Mackenzie/FEI. Are you eligible for ProUni?
What kind of engineering were you thinking about? Civil/Petroleum is very saturated and would be bad choices in the moment... Do you plan on staying in Brazil? (I surely don't)

[WattsWand]

Fagnoni, I like civil/software engineering, only because STEM diplomas are the only useful ones (besides law and medical school). Yes I do want to leave the country, I see no future here for myself (IMO the only positive aspect of living in Brazil is sex), but I don't have a EU passport so I'd need a 'high requested skill' (engineering) to get +1yr visas in EU/Aus/NZ/Asia. I'll pm you about coding and software eng.