I understand to some point Pot's comments, but there is a part where I disagree.
Portugal isn't the land of opportunities, it's very difficult to earn some good money.
You have to invest in your education, be a good employee, invest a lot of effort and have the luck to get a good opportunity.
By nature portuguese people aren't very productive. This is something that has to do in my opinion with our great protection in working policies (that has a reverse effect) and with small wages that also happen because we are not productive, this factors don't help much in making people more productive and change their mentality.
We are considered to be one (or the one) of the countries that have less productive workers in the entire European Union.
So here I can agree with Pot that it isn't easy.
But then there are some examples of the contrary:
How many people do you know that in School their main goal was to be the most popular/cool guy in the school, making fun of teachers and ignoring the main reason of why we all were there, that was for learning?
I know a lot of them.
And what kind of jobs do they have?
The worst ones.
Do they complain about their opportunities?
They sure do.
Do they have the right to complain.
In my opinion NO.
Then I can tell some things about my life decisions that made a big difference in what I have today:
11 years ago I attended a recording school here in Portugal, after I gave up of taking computer engineering university when I was in the 2nd year.
The recording school course was 2 years.
I took the 1st year, and since I had already invested a lot of time in reading recording magazines and forums, practicing with cakewalk, anybody remember when cakewalk apprentice came out bundled with the Soundblaster 16??
I do!! That's how I started in the recording world.
I had a lot of knowledge that made the course less interesting, it wasnt very good either IMO, although it was considered at that time the best one in Portugal.
So after I finished 1st year I decided that I wouldnt attend 2nd year because I wasnt learning much.
I finished the year with the best grade of the class so I was invited to work at the best Portuguese studio (maybe to do all kind of work less what interested me most but that would be a way in, and I earned it with my effort).
I refused the offer because I already had a plan at that time, that was to work in my family business, to get money to buy more gear and one day build a studio. That was my dream. And thats how it happened.
So I returned to my hometown and started working in my family business. First started in a lower function which gave me a lower wage but enough to start slowly to buy some gear. I can say that for years almost all my money went to that.
No smoking, no drinking, no fancy clothes, etc.
Since I officially entered this family business I have worked a lot, and invested a lot of effort on this company, being today one of the most important persons in the company, this has led me to earn some good money but as a downfall I always had very limited spare time to work in recording.
So, as you can imagine I could be working in a studio and not have any gear, because the money I would have earned working in a studio wouldnt be much to buy gear.
If I accepted the studio job for sure that I would be a better engineer at this time because I would have a greater experience.
It all resumes to options that you take.
So after 4 years of having the studio plans and the place to do it, I started building it, (And I can say I started, because I did 90% of the floating floor and channels, once again it makes a difference because I didnt knew nothing about carpentry but even so I invested a lot of time researching about it and working on it.
I dont know much people who would spend weekend nights working on building their studio.
I had a lot of days (more than 200 for sure) that I would arrive home from work at 8, 9 pm have dinner with my wife and daughters, stay with my wife until 1 oclock in the morning and then she would go to bed, and I would go to the studio to do some carpentry or other work in the studio until 5-6 am, then I would sleep 1-2 hours and then it was time for a new day.
I dont know if you know much people who would do this, I dont.
I lost uncountable hours researching on the net and books to be sure that everything would be built as it should.
As you can see I had some opportunities, but more importantly than that, is that I had to make some choices in my life and invest a lot of effort to make things happen.
I have seen a lot of people complain about not having opportunities, but I dont see them searching for them. They are waiting for opportunities to come to them, and as we all know that doesnt happen.
Even when opportunities arrive they dont invest much effort on them, unfortunately thats Portuguese mentality, we all complain but we dont do much to change things.
Moral of the story is that you can make things happen only to a certain point, thats for sure, but it depends mostly on you to make it happen or not and to what point.
Sorry for the long post.