AJ - 00:00
Hello everyone, my name is AJ and it is my true honor to be a Gap Year Ambassador for the Canadian Gap Year Association.
I can't wait to tell you more about who I am, where I'm from, and to share a little bit more about how transformative my gap year experience was and how you can do the same.
I am 19 years old and I was born in Bangkok, Thailand. A city all the way across the world with a whole different array of cultures and mindsets and experiences that has really shaped me into who I am today.
So who exactly am I? Well, I love entrepreneurship and I love business and I love how we can really use business and entrepreneurship as a catalyst to make social change. That really inspires me and it pushes me to explore my own ventures, which I did during my gap year.
I also am really interested in cryptocurrencies, stocks and bonds and the potential of those as solid investments. So you know, trying to make money. But I kind of failed throughout my year.
Well, that was a learning lesson too.
AJ - 01:04
I also attempt to sing I'm not so good and it mainly happens in my shower. But you know, I like to sing along to Taylor Swift every once in a while.
Also something that I used to leave out and really discovered the true importance of in my last year is that I genuinely just love spending time with my friends and family, going, traveling and exploring new places in nature, learning and challenging myself and really meeting new people from different cultures and different backgrounds. That's intrinsically valuable to me. And it's what makes life worth living to, be honest. Yeah, that was a bit dramatic, but you know.
AJ - 01:37
Anyways, the reason that I'm here and I'm so passionate and motivated to make these videos is because I really need you to hear my story. Just hear me out. I would have never imagined myself to be in this position one year ago.
I didn't think taking a gap here was the right decision. I thought it was for people who didn't know what they wanted to do, had no clue what their university plans were or what they wanted to study and what their future would look like.
AJ - 02:06
But that wasn't me. I pretty much knew what I wanted to study. I had my universities lined up and I felt like I had everything planned. But then the pandemic hit. And things kind of got shuffled around.
I wanted to go to school, but I didn't really want to do online school and I ended up taking a spontaneous decision, literally two days before my school year started to take a gap year and I had no clue what to do and little did I know that was one of the best decisions that I could have made because it taught me some very valuable skills.
AJ - 02:47
Not necessarily just about academics and achieving my career goals, but about leading and living a fulfilling life. So exactly someone who thought they knew it all. You know, going to university had it all planned out in two days. Ended up having nothing figured out and had a whole year with nothing to do.
But it was that process of figuring it out of finding out what I wanted to do, what I wanted to explore, and the liberty to do that made things so valuable at the end of the year.
And I would love to share my story about how I navigated the uncertainty and how I cherished that as a means to make myself grow both personally and professionally and spiritually and all that stuff, your parents want to hear.
AJ - 03:32
But all jokes aside, it was truly a transformative year. And I'm really looking forward to sharing the specific steps and specific techniques that enabled me to really achieve such growth.
And so thank you so much for listening to my first video. I can't wait to produce many more to come. And please turn on your notifications. You know click the button like subscribe, comment all that good stuff and I'll be back, racing.