The Person I Admire

Admiring someone means recognizing in that person a characteristic that we value and that serve us as an example. My grandfather, Jaime Oliveira, is the person who best fits this definition. In my best childhood memories, he was always there. I lived with him since I was 2 years old, and this daily interaction was responsible for arousing in me some skills and preferences that directly reflected in my adult life. My grandfather was a decisive character in shaping my personality traits, as well as awakening my interest in reading and directly influencing my professional choices.

My grandfather always encouraged me to be a curious person. He had a restless mind and the most striking characteristic of his personality was certainly his constant search for knowledge. On the shelves of his private library, it was possible to find titles on a variety of topics and in different languages, such as French and English, which he spoke fluently. Although he has never had a formal teaching degree, he was a self-taught scholar of Portuguese literature. For instance, his favorite topic of study was the work of the classical Portuguese poet Luis de Camões, particularly the book “The Lusiads”. My grandfather became an expert on this subject and gave lectures in schools in our city several times. He was a lifelong learner and advised me to follow the same path. “It is never too late to learn something new, knowledge is your most valuable treasure”, he always repeated.

I inherited my grandfather’s interest in reading, especially his passion for history and ancient civilizations. He taught me that through reading it is possible to travel and know other places and new cultures without leaving home. Even though he has never left Brazil, he was able to tell the history of these countries in detail. I grew up hearing about distant kingdoms and important characters from world history. For example, when I was a child, instead of my grandfather telling me stories about Disney princesses, he taught me about gods from Greek mythology, pharaohs from Egypt and passages from the Bible. Influenced by my grandfather, I developed over the years a passion for reading especially on topics related to monarchies, ancient empires and biographies of great monarchs. These subjects still provoke in me the same fascination as they did when I was a little girl.

My grandfather had a relevant role in my career choice of becoming an architect. Since I was a child, I watched closely his design ideas for homes and furniture. Despite not being an architect, he spent hours drawing house plans or developing some furniture project in the small carpentry he built at the back of our house. Woodworking was his other passion in life. I remembered that I loved snooping through his sketches and tools. More important than knowing about the different types of wood, I learned from him to be a perfectionist and attentive to details, fundamental qualities in my profession. Certainly, these moments I spent in my grandfather’s carpentry awakened in me the desire to work in the field of architecture. Many years later, I also completed my specialization in furniture design.