Alumni Story

Focus on the good.”

Toomas Goutt didn’t find out about Catawba, Catawba found out about him. As a high-level swimmer in France, he wanted to go the U.S. for college. Catawba recruited him for its swim team. Toomas, describing himself as “too European at the time” was unfamiliar with U.S. geography, and thought Catawba was in California until he arrived. But where Catawba was located was not his primary concern. “It was a leap, and when you take the leap, that doesn’t really matter,” he explains.

Selecting a major, Toomas received advice from other Europeans: some majors at U.S. schools were not considered as strong as those same majors at European schools. Others did not translate well to finding a job in Europe. With that in mind, Toomas adds, “I knew there were things that in a sense, I was not allowed to do.”  A business major met the criteria for strength and employability. Choosing concentrations in accounting and economics, Toomas also obtained a management concentration. He liked business, “So I was being pushed in a direction that I already felt like going”.

As to the core curriculum courses Catawba students take, Toomas says, “At first it didn’t really make sense. We have our own preprogrammed way of seeing things as Europeans, so if I come to do a degree in math for example, I don’t understand why I have to take these other classes. But I thought it was interesting. As far as I’m concerned, my single best memory in terms of teaching at Catawba was with Dr. [Charlie] McAllister, in his ‘Emerging Western Worlds’. Best class ever, best teacher ever,” Toomas emphasizes, “in regard to the fact that he singlehandedly in one semester increased my English level by tenfold.” Toomas grins, “It was torturous. I was doing more for his class than I was for all my other classes combined.” Dr. McAllister was tough, a teammate told Toomas that if he managed to get an A minus, he would be legendary. Toomas became legendary. “Dr. McAllister also made amazing a class that could have been boring.”

At Catawba, Toomas was a member of the Student Managed Investment Fund, and of Phi Beta Lambda (PBL), the collegiate level of Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA). Catawba’s recently founded PBL chapter competed for the first time in 2015. Toomas ranked first in the state in the FBLA competition in international business, and second at the national PBL competition in Chicago. He also tutored math and taught private swimming lessons in the local community.

Having an F-1 student visa, he applied for a one-year extension after graduation and worked in Washington, D.C. for United Defense. During that year, Toomas prepared for two paths. He tried to get his H-1B visa to continue working in the U.S, also applying to a part-time MBA program. H-1B visas are awarded on a lottery basis. “It doesn’t matter how well you prepare, there is luck involved,” explains Toomas. 

Knowing that he might not get the H-1B visa, Toomas readied an alternate path, preparing for the GMAT and applying to master’s degree programs in Europe. Halfway through the year, he learned he didn’t get the visa. With a strong GMAT score, he was accepted to Warwick University in England.

He continued working for United Defense from England; they were happy with him. Toomas remarks, “It was like working from home, before it became a thing due to COVID”. At Warwick, he reunited with his former roommate, Catawba swim teammate Jevgenij (Jeff) Gamper. “It was funny because we were one year apart at Catawba. The year I spent in D.C., Jeff was still at Catawba. We were chatting and realized we were both going to Warwick; he was going to get his master’s and Ph.D. in mathematics there.  We found ourselves being roommates again.”

During that year, Toomas’ girlfriend, who was his high-school sweetheart, was doing her master’s degree in Quebec. He had not planned to return to France, but he was flexible. “I’m modern and all that,” he smiles. He told her it was up to her; she chose to come back to France, so he followed. He has been in Paris ever since.  While his girlfriend was working in her first job after earning her master’s, Toomas continued working for United Defense. He finally decided to take over the family business, which he had not planned to do, but it was struggling financially. He joined the company in 2018 to pick it up and has been doing it ever since, carrying the weight of turning it around through the pandemic. “We literally went through everything and there are tons of companies in France who are going bankrupt, who can’t pay back their COVID loan, but I’m clean, 100%,” Toomas says of the company, which works with government surplus recycling. Toomas and his girlfriend recently married, and he is ready for new career challenges, while keeping financial oversight with the family company. He wants to continue learning, he explains, not primarily maximizing profits in a business he knows.

In daily life, Toomas still applies things he learned at Catawba. One is his English: when he receives compliments on it, he immediately thinks of Dr. McAllister. Another includes Catawba but is not exclusive to it, and that is discipline. “You have a certain amount of discipline when you’re a high-level swimmer, and it continues at Catawba. The swimmers’ working schedule is insane compared to people in other sports, where some athletes spend part of their practices sitting down. Swimmers are swimming during their practices. They had to be at the pool at 5:45 a.m. every morning and could not be late or they would lose their scholarship. For four years.”

He adds a final thing, remarking that competitive swimmers can be judgmental and elitist, and says Catawba taught him humility and developed respect. Humility because “You are competitive with the other international swimmers who are at Catawba, you might be the best from the town you’re from in your country, but they are the best where they are from in their country.”  And respect for students not on swim team and those not in his major. The core curriculum classes helped. “You get to be friends with a theater major,” he explains, “and go to see the play he is acting in. It’s good in a sense to clash your worldview with other people’s.”

For fun, Toomas still swims. He trains four times a week in the master’s league and regular pro league. In the pro league, he goes to regional championships with swimmers below age 18. It is about mentorship, getting them focused, off their phones. He also enjoys “whipping them at swimming, there’s no better way than by showing that you’re stronger than them. They ask for it,” he grins. Toomas won nationals last year, “so I’m still doing okay. Master’s league is a different mentality. It’s a lot of basically old people like me. [Toomas is 31.]  As soon as you’re above 25, the master’s is structured by five-year age groups, the 25–30-year-olds race together and so forth. Over the last five or six years I’ve won every two years and generally been in the top eight. Before Catawba, after Catawba, swimming is something that’s really very good for the spirit,” Toomas adds. “It helps clear the mind. People say they can’t find time to work out. If I don’t work out, I cannot function.”

His experience at Catawba overall was good. “The food was good; the campus life was good.” But part of it is the attitude you bring to it. “If you come to any place whether it’s Catawba or not and you start to focus on the little things that can always be improved and are not necessarily the responsibility of the institution in the first place. If you look for these things you will find them, and if you think about them, you will nurture them, they will start to get big, and you will basically ruin your own experience in your own head.”

As a person who is focused on life, Toomas knows on what to fix his attention. Focus on the good.