Background

I was born and raised in Quebec, Canada. There I played hockey, enjoyed mountain biking and worked in a bicycle shop for most of high school. At 17, I left home to go to university in Ottawa, Ontario. Between class, homework and friends I found some time to train and race two ironman triathlons. Graduating as a mechanical engineer in 2011, I then joined the familial business for three years. There, I had the opportunity to work with a great team of people towards various interesting projects.

In 2010, I met a guy who would ship his motorcycle somewhere around the world for a few weeks every year. I thought it was a wonderful way to travel. I started searching various travel communities, motorcycles, gear and destinations. I put together a budget and started planning for the trip as I was in third year of university. Since then, I have been searching points of interests, cultures, motorcycles and ways to prepare for it. Since my first day at work, I have been saving towards my trip to meet my budget. My parents kindly allowed me to live with them during that time. It gave me the opportunity to spend time and get to know them as an adult rather than a kid and I am glad I did it.

 

Passions

I am truly interested in learning and experiencing new stuff. I feel restless when doing more of the same day in, day out. I think that meeting new people is definitely a good way to go out of my comfort zone as everyone has interesting things to say and talk about. What interests me the most right now is understanding how people from various countries and cultures live happily in different situations. I felt overwhelmed with how relatively rich people back home would spend most of their time complaining about stupid stuff when so many other people were struggling to survive. I also wanted to break free from the pattern I would see with people around me: gathering goods and spending on stupid things to maintain social status. This trip definitely marks the beginning of a new stage for me as I am starting to live for my convictions and dreams rather than judging myself in other people’s eyes.

Other than learning, what I like the most is to make people happy or feel like I was able to help them. I love working on projects that allow me to build sustainable systems, buildings, process and relationships. I enjoy hiking, swimming, running and cycling.

 

Purpose

Ultimately, I want to have a happy family while enjoying my life and career. In the meantime, I want to experience the things that interest me the most and prevent regrets I could have later in life. Even though I still do not know where I will end up working, I already know that my career will allow me to lead people to complete sustainable projects while fulfilling their individual motivations.

This trip is more than a sightseeing tour. I want to get a grasp of what the international scene really is about. Understanding various culture will serve me in so many ways. I expect this trip to help me better understand what really makes me and other people happy rather than keeping our desires satisfied.

I have been preparing my applications to business schools since September of 2013 and I want to enter my MBA program in the fall of 2015. I truly believe that it will help me achieve my long term goals by teaching me new tools to properly lead people to achieve their own goals while meeting business targets. As much as I felt confident in my engineering principles in the past three years, I felt like the only tool I had to manage people was common sense. Not that it did not work, but I believe there must be more to it.

 

Again, I love meeting new people so please feel free to leave a comment!  🙂