PAPS - Portuguese American Post-Graduate Society

To be or not to be an immigrant in the US

What brought you to the USA?
My wife is a postdoctoral researcher at the Rockefeller University in New York and I came with her. While in New York, and although I still have regular work in Lisbon, I have been working at the New Museum of Contemporary Art as a Curatorial Fellow and writing more and more for Artforum and Artforum.com, which has been a great professional experience.

Name the three most valuable lessons you have learned in this country (at work or not).
If you work hard, you can make it. Your merit is what makes you different from the others. Contacting with different people is the best way to understand yourself.

Are you planning to go back to Portugal? Why/Why not?
No. At least in the near future, as my wife and I still consider that we have better work – and sometimes better life – conditions abroad, be it in the US or other European country.

What conditions (other than salary) do you have here that you do not have in Portugal?
I am working with some of the most brilliant people in this field worldwide, which is important to upgrade my own practice, as not only I can learn but also understand in which areas I can improve. Also, I don’t like Portuguese work ethics and rather prefer to be working in an Anglo-Saxonic culture. Finally, in Portugal people do not appreciate you if you are successful, but envy you and do what they can to stop you from succeeding in what you do. All this, of course, apart from the fact that in Portugal the mediocrity is still the rule, that your family name is still more important than your education, and that no one likes to take risks and develop an open attitude towards innovation.

What do you think Portugal is still better at?
Family bounding, friendships, food, football, and solidarity among people.

What would you like to see changed in the Portuguese educational system?
I think that it would be great to have shorter undergraduate degrees, more postgraduate degrees that you could attend in different stages of your career, less theoretical thesis, complimentary mobility among teachers, and a credit system that would allow the student to make his own choices of what courses to attend and when. Although I do not know it very well, it seems that the US system of major and minors would be interesting to implement, so students could expand their knowledge and not stick to a specific subject.

The daily life in the US