How I convinced Nova SBE to pay me a seven-month vacation
I decided to raise my head and, instead of looking for another blind-alley, pursue the south and north of life. Here I am, at the moment in Taiwan, soon to be heading to the Philippines, knowing that the real quest worth traveling eleven thousand kilometers away from home is finding the ways through the mysteries of within.
Being lost but pursuing the path beneath our feet. That seems to be our way.
The continuous struggle in finding answers to questions we have not yet lied down. Trying to achieve goals that circumstances, and not us, have established.
I decided to raise my head and, instead of looking for another blind-alley, pursue the south and north of life.
That’s when I discovered that Nova SBE and the GapYear association were giving students a chance to present their own Gap Year project and support them financially. And not only that, but also ensuring that a Masters’ spot was saved for the winner.
Months have passed and here I am, at the moment in Taiwan, soon to be heading to the Philippines. I’ve planted, sowed and fertilized land, made cement, concrete, wood sculptures, food processing and farm management and so many other things that I can’t even name.
It has been quite a ride living deep inside Taiwan’s rurality, meeting different people every day, hitchhiking in scooters and pickup-trucks, but the real quest worth traveling eleven thousand kilometers away from home is finding the ways through the mysteries of within.
Bernardo is the winner of the second edition of the Nova SBE Gap Year Scholarship. He will be travelling for the next seven months to Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and India, hoping to settle inner and outer disputes to then start his Masters’ degree in Economics at Nova SBE. During his Bachelor’s program, Bernardo never settled and tried to expand his own vision of Economics and the world while sharing that same need with society through the Economics Without Borders’ Club (Coletivo Economia Sem Muros). Not having borders himself, he made his Erasmus program in Rome, making sure that he would not starve and that he would create a strong academic relationship with his Professors. Whilst finishing his Bachelors, he worked hard with a RE/MAX agency in his hometown — Covilhã — to know the vicissitudes of real estate Economics.
