So I know that I posted just three days ago about my time in Sweden, but I felt the need to write this post sooner rather than later. Since I'm writing this the night before we have our first meeting back since our journey to Nationals, I thought I would explain my experience at the Enactus UK Nationals with you all.
So my journey to nationals didn't start in the UK like most of my teammates. Mine started on a beautiful Swedish morning in Stockholm. At this point in the morning I was already checked out from my hostel, and I had my morning cup of coffee. I found a bench overlooking the Gamla Stan, and began to truly memorize my script for nationals the next day. I had read the script over and over again since I received the finalized script, but I didn't quite have it fully memorized yet. So for about three and a half hours that morning, I spent reading my script out loud on that lovely park bench. Where my bench was it was a busy footpath, and a lot of people walked past me as I was learning my script. My only thought was those people thought I looked crazy. I managed to get most of it down before I got on my train back to the airport for my flight to London for Nationals.
The flight went well, and after a getting back over the UK border it was a quick stop at the airport Boots to get some essentials for me for nationals the next morning. I called the rest of the gang to let them know I was on the way to the hotel, and to my surprise Keith still hadn't showed up so I was doing ok on time then.
So after a quick tube ride and a half a mile walk I managed to get to get to the hotel were everyone was. It was great to see Anthony, Alex, Laura, Lenni, and Keith again, but meeting there was for business and we got right down to it after I showed up. Then for the next three hours we practiced our script and folded annual reports. Annual reports, I might add, were the best of the whole competition. So big shout out to Tom S for the report. We managed to get some food and once we got back we all practiced our lines till we passed out.
After a great night sleep we managed to get ready to show Enactus UK what we did this year. I donned the suit Anthony was grateful enough to bring to London for me. And after a shower and shave I looked sharp in that suit. We all looked sharp that morning, and right then I knew we were ready to go. We did one more run through and I was confident we were going to do a great job during our presentation.
After meeting the rest of the crew (Tom D, Tom S, Catherine, Laura, Shashank, Toby, Emily, and Andrew) at the Hammersmith Novotel. We found out we were in the same league as Newcastle, GCU, Warwick, and Bedfordshire. When we saw that we knew it was a tough league, but we would do our best to come out on top. Then after Newcastle presented we were up. We were all on nevers for the three minutes of step up time, trying to remember lines to make sure that our presentation was prefect. After a bit of a rocky start we pulled it back and finished strong. I personally could have done the Q and A better, but we learn from our mistakes. However I could not have been prouder than I was with how we did.
Although we didn't make it to the semi-final round we were able to show Enactus UK what we were doing and who we plan to impact in the coming months. It was a weird weight off of my shoulders, but right there was when I realized that I am an Enactus UK Alumni, and an Enactus Plymouth Alumni. It was a bittersweet feeling, and I knew it's going to be a lot more work with my team back at PSU, but I'm ready for it. And I think it was also knowing I'll be leaving my project Recreo, however I know the team will continue to impact more people in Plymouth. But after finding out our faith we had a team dinner, and that made me mood change real fast. It was great to see everyone celebrating our achievements this year.
We got up the next morning and headed to nationals once again to see the semi-finals, and the finals. We were able to showcase our projects at the Project Fair, and get some great feedback from other teams. We stayed and watched the final presentations, and every team deserved to win it but huge congrats to Enactus Nottingham for winning it all. You guys will kill it at the World Cup. After that we headed to our hostel and got ready for a night out on the town in London. And it was well worth the feeling the next morning to have such a great send off for Nationals.
But I just want to take a second to thank everyone at Enactus Plymouth for a 'phenomenal' year. It was an honour to work with everyone of you, extremely skilled students. For those of you reading this who just joined, know your time spent here will be some of the best memories of your life. For committee this year, you all showed why you deserved your roles and made this team what it is. And for the Recreo Team it was an honour being your team leader this year. It was a pleasure to get to know you all, and I know you all will do big things with the rest of your lifes. But keep working hard and this project will be great in the coming year. But thank you all again, I wish you all the best in your future endeavors, and I hope I get another chance to work with you all!
Ok, so that was the last of my travel posts for now since I'm back in Plymouth. But there will be more of those to come in a few months time. I hope you're all having a great day, and remember to be safe and have fun!
-Tucker
No comments:
Post a Comment