Friday 16 December 2022 1:41pm
Patrick Boudreau-Alguire graduates from the Otago Business School with a PhD, concluding a demanding research journey analysing the psychology of people who take part in adventure sports.
Boudreau-Alguire’s decision to move from Canada to New Zealand to complete his PhD was not made lightly, but all his planning could not prepare him for the COVID-19 pandemic which prevented him seeing his family for four years.
“My greatest challenge came in the final stages of my PhD,” Boudreau-Alguire says.
“I was at a crucial part of the process when the pandemic began in New Zealand, adding to an already complex workload, stopping me from visiting my overseas family for an extended period, and faced with managing the isolation that came with lockdowns.
“It felt quite ironic to me because, during this challenging time where I spent my days researching and writing about adventure sports, I was most isolated from doing those activities myself.
“There was little to no time to do things like climbing, mountain biking and skydiving which is normally what keeps me sane and helps me feel alive.
“Having consulted with the mental health student clinic staff, getting back out in nature was the greatest help to me in overcoming these challenges and is something I would definitely recommend to others who are going through a similar journey.”
Having come out the other side, Boudreau-Alguire now has a deep sense of pride in his achievement and research.
His adventure sports research was enjoyable for him as he considered the phenomenon from a variety of angles.
Originally, he focused on the personality traits of people who take part in adventure sports, as they tend to be more extroverted, sensation-seeking and emotionally stable.
His thesis primarily focused on the optimal states of mind for adventure athletes like base jumpers, climbers, and kayakers because he was interested in “better understanding the mental states that allow participants to focus on the present moment and, as a result, experience higher levels of performance and improved psychological wellbeing”.
“I started looking into the concept of ‘flow states’ when I started skydiving because, at the time, I had no idea why people like myself wanted to take parts in activities like that,” Boudreau-Alguire says.
“Skydiving enabled me to experience an almost meditative mindset where I was completely present in the moment - this is called a ‘flow state’ - and moving forward I hope to discover more ways to help people experience these ‘flow states’ more regularly so that they might have improved psychological wellbeing and potentially higher performance levels.”
- Kōrero by the Otago Business School Communications Adviser, Kelsey Schutte
University of Otago Business School