About Me
When I’m not working, I enjoy swimming, travelling and sports and games. These activities have provided me with some level of valuable tools that I continue to practice with success in my daily life and challenges that I face as an engineer in a professional setting.
Swimming
Swimming has been a major part of my athletic career and still is. When I was a member of an elite swim club in San Diego, I would spend an average of 24 hours per week in the water. A typical week would have 3 early morning practices before school, 5 practices after school and and one Saturday practice. During weekdays, I was awake by 4:30 AM to get ready for the first 2 hour practice of the day. This was followed by an afternoon practice at 3:30 PM that lasted another 3 hours. When our weekends weren’t full of swim competitions, we would have a Saturday practice which lasted either 3 or 4 hours.
Spending several hours in the pool and testing my physical limits regularly was challenging. However, over a period of time, I became accustomed to this routine. When I accomplished my first long-term goal, I realized something important that I will always remember: hard work, dedication and persistence with proper technique often yields success. After realizing this formula, I began to implement it into each swim practice and I continued to see the results I desired. The swim pool was now a place where I set and achieved goals which gave me a feeling of self-satisfaction after each practice.
As my swimming career developed along with the rest of my life, I started to translate what I learned in the pool to my everyday life. Some important skills I adopted are time management, analytical problem solving, effective communication, ability to work under pressure, leadership and teamwork. These are some of my many characteristics that have allowed me to succeed in both my academic and professional careers and also define who I am.
Chris Vorlicek swimming the English Channel as part of a Tufts relay with former teammates Lou Tamposi and Andrew Altman.
Travelling
Over the course of my academic career, I never had much free time due to the time demands required to succeed with swimming. The first time I was able to travel was shortly after I graduated from Tufts University. After studying many different countries, I decided to travel to Europe. Just before I had set sail towards a new chapter in my life, I was a bit nervous about submersing myself in a foreign country by myself. But once I set foot at my first stop in Germany, my nerves transformed into an insatiable appetite to satisfy my curiosity.
Everything that I had learned from my studies about history appeared to be much more profound. With every historically significant site I visited, I had a feeling as if I took a step into the past which fascinated me. I came to appreciate differences in culture, architecture, lifestyle and atmosphere which I made a primary effort to explore throughout my travels. Despite my sense of urgency to discover and learn about all aspects of every city and country I visited, I realized that managing my time effectively was an important factor while travelling.
Many other skills came into practice during my travels. Some skills were developed while travelling and others were already with me and translated to help me along my journey. Being a socially outgoing person and conversationally fluent in another language along with an ability to interpret social queues and body language has strengthened my communication skills. One of the most important skills I picked up while frequently moving into completely new environments is my ability to adapt. This is something I have successfully translated to my professional life and is now one of my characteristic strengths.
I spent two weeks volunteering for a turtle rehabilitation non-profit located on Fitzroy Island - a small island off the coast of Cairns, Australia. After each day of volunteer work, I got to spend some time snorkeling along the coast of Fitzroy Island and took this picture.
Sports & Games
After graduating from college, I took a break from swimming and began to participate in other sports. While there was some level of strategy in swimming, it was limited in comparison to other team sports. There was one in particular that I developed a strong interest for. Soccer. With a competitive background that was primarily spent in the water swimming in a line almost every day, I had a tough time catching up to speed with others at first and endured many playful jabs towards my “unique” style of play. But I was determined to become one of the better players within our league by the end of my first season. My strong willingness to learn combined with my work ethic and athletic abilities became a formula that led me to accomplish my goal within just a few months.
Unlike other sports, I have been playing games to some degree for most of my life. However, these games were often involving a deck of cards and didn’t have much of a strategy component to them. Just like with other sports, it wasn’t until after college when I began to enjoy getting together with friends on a weekend night and play resource based, competitive board games that required a strategy to win. The first board game I fell in love with was “Settlers of Catan” and I couldn’t get enough of it for a while. I continued to explore all the other games that fit my play style when I came across a classic, “Dungeons & Dragons”. This was the game that incorporated everything I could want. I was passionate about how much detail was involved, the creative liberties it offered, the emphasis of teamwork and the capacity to make no two quests the same. Once I found the perfect group of people to get together with, I began to develop life skills that I also practiced in the workplace. Certain skills such as cooperative efforts, problem solving, decision making and creativity allow me to continue to attain success in certain projects within my professional career.