Today we celebrate Thulane’s admission to the Mathematics program at University of São Paulo (USP)!

Right after finishing high school, the pressure came: “what will she do?”, “she needs to decide now.” My answer was: she has time to choose, she’s only 17, let the girl be.

At first, she considered pursuing a sports scholarship to study in the U.S. With time, she realized that wasn’t her path. She started working, gained experience, did an exchange program in Scotland, and upon returning, she said: “Mom, I want to study Applied Mathematics at USP.”

She took the 2024 Fuvest — the highly competitive entrance exam for USP — and didn’t pass. She did well on the national exam (ENEM – Brazil’s national high school exam used for university admission), but asked me: “Mom, I really want to study at USP, please give me one more year.” So she was given another chance. She would leave the house at 5 a.m. and return at 8 p.m. She studied hard, committed herself, faced her fears. She learned discipline and how to grow from mistakes. She got used to the odd looks when people found out she was aiming for an exact sciences course. And she always had a reply ready: “Did you know that the pre-Socratic philosophers were also mathematicians?”

Thulane is the first in our lineage to have a choice. Her grandmothers and great-grandmothers spent their lives, as they said, “cleaning white people’s houses.” They dreamed and fought for a different future for their descendants.

Thulane is also the first to enter college at such a young age. I graduated at 32 — survival came before dreaming of college. And through the public education I had access to, doors opened so that she could now make our lineage proud and access the right to a quality public university.

The paths unfolding, the struggles bearing fruit, the elders’ tears becoming the sea. The time we must respect so that our daughters can bloom at their own pace. The power of education to break walls and set us free.

Congratulations, my daughter. Your ancestors salute you. Today we celebrate!

Djamila Ribeiro

*Content translated with artificial intelligence*