To be honest, I initially didn’t want to present at the Enactus Regional Competition. I don’t want to think of how much I would have missed if I had turned it down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the first semester of my second year at Capilano, one of my friends mentioned Enactus to me and encouraged me to join. He told me about the new financial literacy program that was running and figured it would be a great opportunity for a future accountant. Agreeing with him, I gave my email to the recruiters at the nearby table and didn’t think anything of it for around three months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over winter break I discovered that one of my other friends was in Enactus, which reminded me of my desire to join the team, and asked her if there was any way I could join when school began again. Luckily there was, and the first week back to school saw me running to catch the end of their meeting after my other meeting and being introduced to the team. They had been told by my friend that I was good at presenting and wanted me to audition as a presenter for the Regional Competition. I agreed to try out before discovering I was required to memorize a short script for the audition and half of a five minute script for the actual competition. Being horrible at memorization, I immediately balked at the requirements before figuring I likely wouldn’t be chosen if I couldn’t memorize. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A week later my time slot arrived, and, since I did present in the competition, it isn’t hard to determine that I was asked to take the role a few days after. I hadn’t expected to be chosen, but after a small internal debate I responded in the affirmative. It was an entire mile leap out of my comfort zone, but I had agreed to this much and decided to see it through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I got the final script, I didn’t think I would ever be able to memorize my two and a half minutes worth of lines, but after a few days of going through it I began to get it. We met for the first time to go through the script with the video on the Sunday before we left, leaving less than a week before the competition, which did nothing to lower the nerves and stress levels of anyone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We practiced for four hours that day, and went through it once the next day, before Wednesday had us boarding the plane to Calgary. We still had a couple of days to practice together, so nerves weren’t too high, but it finally sank in that we were going to be presenting on Friday whether we were ready or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wednesday evening was spent settling in to our AirBNB we had rented, and Thursday morning was spent lounging around before the president meetings and then the opening ceremonies. I was asked to tag along to the meetings, since I would be returning the next year and both the president and vice president would not be, before joining the rest of the group for the ceremony. That night was spent rehearsing from around nine o’clock to three o’clock, before we all got our three hours of sleep and headed to do our tech check the next morning. The nerves didn’t set in until about an hour before the presentation, and we spent that time practicing the presentation as many times as we possibly could. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our first competition was the TD Entrepreneurship Challenge at 9:45 am, and then we had Scotiabank Youth Empowerment at 1:30 pm. Both presentations were the same, and both were live-streamed on the Enactus Capilano Facebook page. The presentation can be watched below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n