A young man from Sault Ste. Marie will soon study in one of the most prestigious economics programs in the world – and he’s definitely had an interesting path to get there.
This fall, Kavi Giroux will head stateside to enrol in Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, after he ties up a rigorous high school career that brought him to New York to play soccer at a high level.
Although Giroux studied at Korah Collegiate & Vocational School from Grade 7 to 10, for the past two years he’s been enroled in the Switzerland-based International Baccalaureate program.
“It's an extremely intense program. It's one of the hardest high school courses in the world, and I did it online, as I also travelled to New York to play soccer,” Giroux told SooToday.
“What is really important with the IB program, what I found seems the most beneficial, is it teaches you how to learn. It teaches you how to study.”
For his final two years of high school, Giroux moved his studies online and his life to New York to play for the Manhattan Soccer Club, where his days were filled with studying and training.
“It's meant for people who do something else, along with wanting to do intense school. So for me, it was soccer,” he said.
“It's just you and your computer, you and your notes, working, along with training four to five hours a day for soccer.”
Students in the program take seven courses – each with only two hours of instruction per week – which freed Giroux up to pursue soccer at a high level, as well, as his team went on to compete in a state championship.
While in New York, he also developed a passion for economics, after taking courses through school and running into professionals in the field.
“What really drew my interest in economics was actually going to New York,” he said.
“I was able to meet with someone who studies economic studies, and I was able to walk around the Bank of America building and really learn about what they do there.”
With a strong background in math as well as robotics, Giroux said economics presents a way to connect his strengths back to people and their behaviour.
“What economics is – the study of scarcity, the study of what people are doing and how people interact with each other – can be represented quantitatively, and being able to put these two and two together is really what made me fall in love with economics.”
Ultimately, that passion will bring him to one of the top universities in the world.
“With the IB program, I was able to study economics, and that’s really what made me want to go to Cornell . . . because I fell in love with the study of how the markets, international markets, how these variables connect with each other – and with Dyson, I'm able to concentrate that even more in defining what exactly I want to go into.”
Once he’s through with school, Giroux hopes to find a job in his field – perhaps on Wall Street – and spend time travelling the world.
“The experience that they have, people on Wall Street, it blows my mind, how they can take a couple numbers and paint a whole picture for me,” he said. “I really want to spend time there on Wall Street and also travelling the world.”
Although he spent much of the past two years in New York, Giroux is currently back home in Sault Ste. Marie tying up his studies with the International Baccalaureate program, where it all began for him at Korah Collegiate.
“I've always connected with the teachers and they were always able to push me further in math, give me a question on the board that they know I can't solve, to see me fail . . . (and) always being able to push me to the next level,” he said.
“Another thing I really enjoyed at Korah was Student Senate,” he said. “We were able to make real change in school.”
As he prepares to take off for university, Giroux also expressed gratitude to his family for all the opportunities he's been able to pursue.
"Not many people are able to ship their son to New York to kick a ball and to read textbooks," he said. "Being able to have their support every day, and call them no matter what hour of the night, has been invaluable in supporting my career and getting it to this point."