It is never too late to start new paths, a new career in a new geography. An opinion article by Fernanda Borges, Business Intelligence consultant at Adentis, originally published in Human Resources Portugal. When I was a teenager, when I imagined myself at the age of 25, I saw a doctor (or a business woman, a teacher, an engineer and everything else that my imagination allowed), with children, a husband, many responsibilities and a lot of seriousness, because I imagined that adult life did not allow for much good humor. I think I had this picture of the future in my mind for a long time, but each time I grew up, that image changed scenery and gave way to another context: reality. Fernanda as a child thought, and sometimes, at that time, it was something that didn't seem right to me. In my “real” 25 years, I was in the last year of production engineering college, far from being married, without children and surprisingly, I had not become this very “serious” person, in fact, I still had eyes that had accompanied me since I was a child. . Was that right? The course my life had taken, in confirming few of those predictions, bothered me a little. “I have to reach financial stability soon”, “I cannot change my profession”, I who always wanted to have an international experience, considered that I was “too old” for that, my life needed to be “resolved soon”. I guided many of my personal and professional choices according to this need for quick resolution, but still something told me that it might be worth the risk, although it was a thought I used to repress. stability, worked as a civil servant, received an above-average salary for my profession and managed to have a very balanced personal life. But something inside me, from time to time, revisited a thought I had when I was still an engineering graduate, when I had a Database course and a Computer Intelligence course, which was to delve deeper into some area of ​​information technology. There came a time when this spoke so loudly, that I decided to “drop everything and take a few steps back”. Why not take a chance, right? Shortly before that, I had the opportunity to work with a self-service Business Intelligence tool that I really liked and that sparked my interest in knowing more about the career of a BI professional. According to the Data Science Academy Platform, this professional aims to convert raw data into insights for the business, and thus be able to assist managers in decision making. To go beyond the definition, I read many articles, took online courses and after a lot of research, I decided to enroll in the Master of Information Management, with a specialization in Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence, in Lisbon. At the same time that I thought it was very daring on my part, the possibility of delving into a career that I was so excited about, in addition to being able to fulfill the dream of having an experience abroad, made my eyes shine. since 2019, I have been in the beautiful lands of Lisbon, lands that have revealed pleasant surprises with beautiful landscapes, a very pleasant climate and a sky of a blue that I have never seen. I arrived with two suitcases weighing 23 kg each - full of clothes, shoes and everything else I managed to bring here from Brazil - plus 1 ton of feelings, dreams, fears and a lot of homesickness. I'm currently in the 2nd year of my master's, writing my thesis and I've been working as a Business Intelligence consultant for almost 1 year. When I look back, I see that I made the right decision, but I also see a period that was and still is difficult in many ways. Even with the stunning blue sky outside, I had to face gray days. Dealing with bureaucracy, finding the ideal place to live, having classes entirely in English, dealing with family health problems - miles away -, questioning myself many times if I made the right decision…I thought the biggest challenge was to drop everything and come, actually the biggest challenge is staying strong in the purposes and realizing that not always (I think most of the time), things will happen exactly the way they were planned and that it is necessary to be resilient and adapt to these changes in direction . I realized that the important thing is to always believe and never consider that we can't, that we don't have more time, that we missed the opportunity. Of course, the planning, the focus, the purposes must always be our allies, it doesn't have to be, as the samba says, “let life take us” simply. But sometimes we are very strict with the paths we want for our life, which makes us lose the satisfaction of enjoying this journey, of risking a new path, a new road and all the possibilities.

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