"an even better opportunity" by shannon

"an even better opportunity" by shannon - August 2014 Scholarship Essay

Laney and I were standing on stage squeezing the feeling out of each other’s hands. They began calling team names- 3rd, not us; then second- not us; hopefully first? Our hearts fell to the bottom of our stomachs when we didn’t hear our names at all and were beginning to be brushed offstage. NJ DECA states is where we failed.

Lets look back those past 4 months. My partner Laney and I had worked basically everyday on a 30-page paper called “a manual.” We created a business plan for a cookie sale to raise money for our DECA chapter and wrote the manual based off of our experiences. We then, when the manual was revised and corrected for about the 46th time, we were ready to send it to state DECA to compete against the best in NJ. But apparently after months of hard work, we just weren’t up to par.

The bus ride home, once I stopped crying, I felt so low. DECA was one of the few things I was genuinely good at. And after previously moving onto nationals the year before I felt as if I wasn’t good enough any more. But I guess my advisors thought otherwise. At the time, I had my ear buds plugged in and tried my best to ignore their congratulatory words to the students who had placed and moved onto nationals. But I heard one thing- my name. Every single persons eyes looked directly towards me in the back of the bus and I looked up towards my advisors and finally took my ear buds out. They repeated their words again- I was selected to move onto nationals as a representative at the senior leadership conference. I could not believe it. The memory of me mentioning to my teacher one-day, months ago how rewarding I thought it would be to go to the leadership conference flashbacked in my head. She had remembered that conversation and I was getting a second chance, but I did not know that this second chance was actually an even better opportunity to grow as a person.

When I arrived at the leadership conference, it began by throwing me out of my comfort zone and placing me at a table with 8 other representatives from across the country. I learned how to talk and interact with new people I had no idea existed. Throughout the conference we were taught valuable lessons I can take with me throughout not only my college experience but farther into finding a job and beginning a family. What I took the most from it was the opportunity to sit down and speak with several of our country’s most powerful business CEOs. They taught me life lessons that really made me look at life from a different perspective. The advice changed my outlook on my pre-determined career path and the morals I had possessed at the time. When I had not placed for my manual I felt as a failure but when I walked out of the leadership conference I was prepared to take on the world.