By Jake Kivanc
Home is a word that brings comfort to many, but for Nick Vidas it’s always been a dispensable one.
Born to a Chilean mother and Australian father, Vidas has lived everywhere from Venezuela to Egypt, South Africa to Australia.
Now, he resides on the third floor of Pitman Hall.
Spending most of his childhood and elementary education in a state of constant relocation, Vidas never found a real foothold for himself until moving to Vancouver during high school. That all changed when he ran into delinquency issues with the law.
“I was facing [deportation] back to Australia or to go to a school they had chosen for me,” Vidas said.
He said that he didn’t want to put pressure on his family to leave the country and agreed to finish his high school education at a military-based boarding school in Wellandport, Ont.
Reflecting on his time at the academy, Vidas said he doesn’t resent his experience.
“What they always say about the school is that you hate the process but love the product,” he said. “You deal with a lot … that could be handled in another way, but it taught me a lot of valuable things that gave me a new perspective on life.”
That train of thought brought him to Ryerson, where he has begun his first year of business technology management.
Vidas said that it was hard for him to adjust after attending a military boarding school in contrast to the more relaxed atmosphere at Ryerson.
“I still have some things to figure [out] because it’s a big transition,” he said. “I just have to figure out what to do with all this free time. The nice thing is that I’m learning something that I actually care about every day.”
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