they invited me again to teach a course in the usp mba. and every time something like this happens, i enter a strange introspective mode where i try to reconstruct the path that brought me here.
it’s not false modesty. it’s genuinely bizarre.
because i can pinpoint with surgical precision the moment when everything started to change: when i stopped just consuming content and started producing it.
the best way to learn is to have to teach
in 2016, 2017, i was giving in-person programming classes. php, javascript, html, css. the reason was simple and not at all romantic: i needed extra money.
no manifesto. no mission. just bills to pay.
but something unexpected happened. to be able to teach a 3-hour class on any topic, i had to study three times as much. i had to understand it deeply, because there’s always someone in the room who will ask something you didn’t anticipate. and if you don’t know the answer, that’s fine — but if you don’t even know where to start looking, the problem is bigger.
and that’s when i realized: i had never learned so fast in my life.
every class i prepared forced me to peel back layers i thought i already knew. every article i wrote forced me to organize thoughts that until then were just vibes in my head. every talk pushed me to find a narrative that made sense to someone who doesn’t live inside my brain.
you think you’re giving, but in reality you’re receiving more than any student in the room.
the day someone told me i wasn’t capable
in mid-2019 i was working at a company with a legacy angular.js frontend. i proposed a migration to vue.js. and i heard, in no uncertain terms, that i was not capable of sustaining that migration.
you know what i did? i recorded an entire vue.js course for alura.
it wasn’t revenge. ok, maybe a little. but it was more about proving to myself that i understood it deeply enough to teach other people. because if you can teach it, you know it. if you can’t explain it, maybe you just memorized it.
and i never stopped.
this is not about generating content
i need to pause here to make something explicit, because the current zeitgeist confuses everything.
zeitgeist: german word that means “spirit of the time,” used to describe the intellectual and cultural climate of an era. and yes, this is the first time i’ve ever used this word in a piece of writing. i’m emotional. thank you for witnessing this moment.
i’m not talking about opening your favorite ai chat and asking it to generate an article to post on linkedin and “engage your network.” that’s something else. that’s marketing. it has its value, but that’s not what i’m talking about.
i’m talking about the process. about stopping. researching. reading three articles and disagreeing with two. writing a paragraph, deleting it, rewriting. realizing you don’t understand something as well as you thought. going after it. coming back. building a narrative that makes sense.
the value is not in the published article. the value is in what happened in your head between the idea and the period at the end.
when you write to teach someone, you’re forced to confront the gaps in your own knowledge. and then you have two options: fill the gaps or pretend they don’t exist. publishing is committing to the first option.
the archaeology of my own texts
i can go back in time and find my first texts. my first article on alura on unit testing in vue. my first post on medium about react.
and it’s a unique experience to reread those things. the structure was different. the tone was different. the analogies were worse — or better, depending on the criteria. the point is: i changed. my narrative changed. my way of explaining evolved.
and that only happened because i kept putting text into the world, repeatedly, for years, accepting that each publication was an imperfect snapshot of my understanding at that moment.
if i had waited until i was “ready,” i wouldn’t have started to this day.
the invitation
so here’s my challenge, and i’m being serious: write something.
it doesn’t have to be long. it doesn’t have to be brilliant. it doesn’t need seo optimization, a pretty thumbnail, and a provocative headline. it just needs to be yours.
choose something you think you know. try to explain it to someone who doesn’t know. and observe what happens in the process. observe the moments when you get stuck and think “wait, do i really understand this?” — those are the most valuable moments.
publish on medium, on dev.to, on your personal blog, in a shared google doc, the tool doesn’t matter. what counts is just rolling up your sleeves and doing it.
and if you publish and tag me on social media saying you wrote because this text here impacted you in some way, i will read it. and i’ll give you my feedback.
it’s not an empty promise. it’s a commitment from someone who knows that the path to a class at usp started with an extra bill to pay and a freelance gig teaching php.