March Madness

Hey everyone,

So it's been a little bit since I last talked to you all, but man do I have a ton to fill you all in on. It has been a crazy busy few weeks well more like month of deadlines, and events that I was involved in so as all the college basketball players geared up for March Madness I had my own version of it this month.

Well first things first schoolwork took a priority at the beginning of this and continued till the day before I wrote this post. I had three papers, a presentation, and exam, which this isn’t including the amount of posts and quizzes I needed to do for my online PSU class. So I did my best and hit the books as hard as I could, and through that I had quite a few sleepless nights, but in the end it's all worth it I guess.

But I know a lot of you don’t read this blog to see what schoolwork I’ve been up too. So on that note let me dive straight into the fun stuff that happened this month. First there has been a slight running theme of the month of whenever I would go out into town, and that was travel gear. At the end of this month I have some travel plans to see some things that I’ve always wanted to see. So I made a point to get all the necessary things a euro traveler would need. I did my best to get the best quality I could on my shoestring budget. I managed to get everything I needed in order to make sure my journey should be a fun one. I will be writing more about my little euro adventure as I go through it so keep an eye our for that.

But during the shopping for gear, and studying for all of my course work I still had one of the more important things to this month, which was to prepare for Enactus UK regionals. I was on the presentation team so it was a huge responsibility to make sure that our presentation went off without a problem and with Anthony, Laura, Keith, Lenni, and Alex on the team as well I knew that we had a great change of that happening. We meet almost everyday in the week leading up to the presentation, and although most of us were exhausted from the constant work it proved to pay off during our presentation at regionals.

We had to travel up to Bristol to compete in the South-West Regionals the team and I, including Nina our University advisor made our way there. Even after we parked the van, and were still going over our lines and we were making sure that it was near perfect. Me and Lenni almost got killed practicing our lines as we walked across streets in Bristol. When we finally got to KPMG in Bristol it was game time. It was only a short time waiting before we walked in to give our presentation. We were able to show the judges our three core projects Spark, Edify, and my project Recreo and what impact they have already created, through both our Annual Report (shout out to Tom for making it), and our presentation.

Needless to say our presentation was almost flawless, but that's just me being bias saying that. But then the pressure was on when our presentation finished and Q and A began. From the being of the questions till what seemed like forever the judges asked questions about Recreo, and I was answering every phenomenal question they had. After they were done grilling me, and moved on to the other projects it seemed like we had made it into the clear. During our feedback at the end everything seemed so positive I couldn’t help but think that we had made it through to Nationals.

After getting a quick bite to eat we all got back into the van and headed back to Plymouth. We all had the same though on our mind as to whether we had made it through or not. I ended up sleeping the whole ride back to Plymouth after regionals knowing that we had a great shot to get through to Nationals. So when the news broke later that week that Enactus Plymouth had made it through to Nationals in London I was more than happy. However I think the only reason I fell asleep on that drive back was because I was exhausted from regionals and seeing UPFC play at home park for Varsity.

First let me explain what Varsity is for those who don’t know. Varsity is when your school goes head to head with your rival school in our case Marjon Uni, in every sport both schools have. From that for every win that sports team gets the school gets points overall on the varsity leaderboard, and the school with the most points after the last event wins Varsity. For every sports team this is the most important game of the year, and for UPFC’s first team it was no different.

As they took to the pitch that Thursday night at home park they needed to win in order for Plymouth to win Varsity. Although they went down early in the first half to goal conceded due to a poor clearance, the boys fought back and made the match level half way through the second half. So being that they needed a winner, and that the match was level at the final whistle, the match went straight to pens. With all the stress of penalties UPFC slotted every single one home to win 4-1 on pen’s. I have to say that was one of the best nights of watching football I’ve had in a long time.

Then the rest of the month was filled with parties, Enactus, and studies. I continued to work hard and then I went and ran in the Plymouth Rag’s Color run, which was great fun. Wish there was more people throwing paint, however it was still great fun.

So that was my March Madness. I know this was a post that was a lot longer than usual, but with how crazy it was I really didn’t get a chance to write in this blog. But I want to thank you all who read this because never did I think I would have had 1400 views on this blog. So thank you so much for enjoying the content that I put out and I hope I can keep doing for the rest of my time in the UK. But in the coming weeks it will be a bit more a travel blog so be prepared for some really jam packed blogs with some really cool stories. But until then stay safe, and as always enjoy the ride!

-Tucker