What place do you want to have in the world?
Have you ever asked yourself this question?
At some point in high school, my history professor,
who was also teaching on life project, asked me this question,
"What's the place you want to occupy in the world?"
I didn't know the answer.
I couldn't imagine that thinking about it
could disclose such possibilities of growth and future.
I come from a very poor family,
most of them coming from Rondônia, where they worked in the fields.
And, when I was around one, they came to São Paulo.
In spite of all the difficulties my family faced everyday,
they always insisted in giving me the best.
and they've always given me all the support I needed.
I have to thank them for everything.
Near my house,
there was a school where I started my primary school classes.
That school was considered the worst school of my area.
Most professors were not reliable,
classes were canceled, and there was general disinterest.
Of course, I wasn't remotely motivated.
When time came to go to the secondary school,
A new school appeared, next to the other one,
a full-time school called Jardim Riviera.
I've always liked studying,
but most of my friends were still in the old school.
So I wondered: should I go or not?
And then there was my mother, who wanted me heaps to go,
saying that I had to make a change.
I changed school, and, consequently, my life changed.
The new school was public too, but it was far better.
And, from the very beginning, I felt welcome in the extreme.
There I came across a project called 'Protagonismo Juvenil',
that is a project in which young students with academic distinction
have the opportunity to influence other youth
and those youth disseminate what they've learnt in their own schools.
During my secondary school years,
I ended up being one of the main representatives
of São Paulo State in terms of juvenile protagonism.
Now, that project woke my proactive side.
And as in the school there were also elective courses,
the possibility to choose what I wanted
made me decide to attend a course called Pre-Induction Science Program.
Among the possible projects,
working with plants was one of the most reachable.
So, I walked to a park near my house
and there I bumped into a huge tree called 'embaúba'
that, according to conventional wisdom, had catheterizing properties.
The embaúba is an endemic tree of Brazil.
Everybody knows it, it's a plant that has many properties.
Even people of my family knew it.
Surfing the Internet,
I saw that the hypothesis
of the catheterizing property was coming true.
But there was nothing scientific about it.
How come? Such an important tree and nothing scientific about it?
It was exactly what I needed to start my project.
After the starting idea, I thought about the best way to use the plant.
So I made tea, juice, balm, soap, I even made recycled paper with it.
I was running out of ideas.
The tea had still an acceptable taste, but, in big quantities,
it has hallucinogenic potential.
Don't try this at home!
(Laughter)
The juice had a horrible taste, so no one would try it out.
But, ladies, they say it's good for weight loss.
The balm, I tested it, gave results for sure,
and I saw that there was a chance of developing a wonderful project.
Since I didn't have a laboratory where to develop my research,
I had to look for partnerships.
I found partnerships with some universities,
among them, UNIFESP;
they helped me to develop my project better.
I did the specie identification, the pharmacological properties mapping,
I did a battery of tests.
And, at last, I proved embaúba was catheterizing.
I won many prizes, I also published a scientific article.
Today, many students of that school do research,
and my project is an example for many of them.
I am really proud of this.
With all that encouragement to do research,
I lived the secondary school years wishing to attend Pharmacy.
I, who came from the worst school of my area,
passed all the entrance exams I did.
Did I choose Pharmacy? No.
I stopped, meditated, and decided
Engineering was something more related to what I wanted for my future.
Today I'm 18, I'm coursing my second year,
and I want to graduate in Energy Engineering.
Because I can't stand to know a country with a territorial extension like this,
with such climatic diversities
is still using thermoelectric energy, in good weather periods.
And at the same time, it has so little matrix energetics diversification.
Even now, I don't have the answer for that initial question.
But, thanks to my education, I discovered that my strongest will is growing up
and making life better for the people around me.
In my life, there have been two kinds of schools.
But this has never demotivated nor stopped me.
So, today I want to serve as inspiration for as many youth as possible,
just like other people inspired me during my entire life.
I want youth to believe in their talent
and in their hard work.
I wish they looked for their dreams and changed their lives and the world.
People should never ever say that someone's dreams are rubbish.
It would be a pity if everyone believed this.
You are as big as your dream.
It doesn't matter where you came from, where you were born.
If you have a dream and move mountains to achieve what you want,
believe me, things will happen.
Do you know Alice in Wonderland?
Do you remember the cat?
"Which way you ought to go depends on where you want to get to."
So, the question is this: what's your dream?
And what's the place you want to have in the world?
Thank you very much.
(Applause)