Bro Takes Gap Year After Graduation To Travel World And The Film He Made Of The Experience Is Awe-Inspiring

Sometimes the BroBible tip line is a blessing. Most times, it’s not. Generally it clogs up my email with brainless PR pitches (“Six months until Christmas, have you decided what products will be on your ‘Holiday Gift Guide’ yet?!!”) and videos of people who decided that filming themselves taking a shit would be a good way to become Internet-famous:

But occasionally, occasionally, something worthwhile comes along and it’s actually good enough to make it onto the site. Enter: Kevin Courtney, a Canadian Bro who filmed his travels during a gap year between graduating college and entering the “real world”:

My name is Kevin Courtney and I’m a filmmaker from Toronto. Over the last 365 days, after graduating from university with a degree in business administration, I decided to take a year to pursue my passion: filmmaking. I sat myself down and I asked “Why,” or rather “Why not? Why not now?” Right now I’m as young as I’ll ever be, and who knows if I’ll ever get a chance to travel the world like this again.

A wise man once said “routine is the enemy of time..it makes it fly by”. So I decided: I’ll take a year, try to make this thing work, travel as much as possible and if it does work great, and if it doesn’t…well, it’s back to the suit I guess. Worst case….its a good story.

We followed up with Kevin (after making sure his film didn’t include any super glued assholes), and he gave us the scoop on what made him decide to take a gap year in the first place:

A couple things inspired this trip. The first honestly was a mentor of mine last summer. The summer before heading into my final year at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, I was fortunate enough to get an internship at a large technology company in Toronto. In the internship program, everyone is given a “mentor”; someone that management believes is in the position you would like to be in, in 10 years.

One day my mentor asked me what my plan was after grad. I told him frankly, “Start working a 9-5.” Shocked, he asked me why I didn’t want to travel. I explained to him that I did but that I figured having a gap year would be a deterrent for employers. He assured me that as an employer, he would never hold a gap year against someone, as long as they learnt something and had come back all the wiser. He also added “As someone who didn’t travel after grad and watched his younger brother do it, I urge you to take a year”.

I kind of put that in the back of my mind, but as the time came for me to leave school and come back home to the real world, things started to hit me. I thought to myself, If I get caught up in the 9-5 rat race right off the bat, I might never have an opportunity to do this. Not to sound like a spoiled millennial, but 2 weeks a year just didn’t seem like enough vacation time for what I wanted to do at this point in my life.

So I decided I’d take a year to pursue my passion of videography and film, and also travel as much as possible. I figured if it doesn’t work, I’ll go back to the suit and tie…worst case scenario, it’s a good story. I wanted to show people that the path less walked isn’t always a bad one and that sometimes, taking a year to pursue your passion, do something you love and be spontaneous can be the most rewarding experience for a young person.

The finished product is beautiful, and makes me regret not taking a gap year to travel myself. And regardless of what you think about ditching the regular grind of a 9-5 to see the world, one thing is for certain:

Two weeks of vacation a year is definitively not enough.