Enactus UK Nationals

Hello everybody,


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        

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     

Work and a Festival

Hey everyone,

It’s been a busy few weeks but I just wanted to fill you all in on what I have been up to. It’s seems like it was not to long ago since I got here in September, and then at the end of next month it’s the Easter break. So time here is starting to dwindle but I am taking every opportunity to enjoy the remaining time that I have here in the UK. And yes, I do plan on doing some more traveling before I leave Europe and that’s one of things that I will be doing during Easter break, but I can talk about that later.

So over the past few weeks lectures have started, and our Enactus project Recreo has started to take off. So needless to say that things here are moving fast, and they have me working hard. I have some great lectures here, one of which is an American. I enjoy his class, because he gives that very American style of teaching that I am use to back home in the states. It makes me feel at home.

Then there is our Encatus project Recreo. I am really happy to be starting to get our project off the ground here. Although we’ve hit a few bumps in the road here and there we’ve managed to get over those and continue to steam ahead on the project. Our project looks like it will be apart of our regional presentation for the Enactus southwest Regionals. I’m also on that presentation team so I also have to work on our presentation and how we would like to present it. So like I said before I have been crazy busy.

Even though I’ve been really busy writing papers, doing course work, and anything that has to do with Enactus I have still managed to find some time to enjoy my time here. So last week my University had a Beer Festival, that they called it Beauty and the Yeast, but besides the odd name the beers were great. The section of brews ranged from the very mainstream names that most people here know, but there was also a list of local brewed cask beers.

So I took the time right after one of my lectures to drink some beer at the festival. The SU was packed already and the festival had started about an hour before, but luckily none of the cask beers were sold out yet. So I made my way over the cask brew area as Irish and German drinking songs were being blasted through speakers throughout the SU. The best beer that I tried there was Summerskills Devon Dew, but a bit of advice for all the soon to be travelers who read this if you're in England go to a local beer festival and try some of the local brews.

During the festival, the sun was making what seemed to a rare appearance that week so everyone was taking their beers outside and soaking in the sun well enjoying a great brew. I followed suit and went on top of the SU and enjoyed the weather. It wasn’t long for the sun so after trying some more local brews I called it a day and headed home.

So things here are going well busy, but well. I hope there will be some more festivals I get to experience before I head off in July. But every minute here isn’t getting wasted whether it is for course work or enjoying a local event everything is going extremely well. I hope you all are having just as good of a time in your own lives wherever you are in the world. I will be writing again soon, but until then have fun and enjoy life.

-Tucker

Enactus: UK edition

Hey Guys,

So I know a few weeks ago I told you that I was going to fill you in on some of the things that happened during that spell in October where I really didn't post because I was so buzy. Well now I'm going to try and fill you all in on a few things here and there that I think were cool that happened to me that month. So the first thing that I want to tell you about is the trip I went on with Enactus Plymouth to Grantham for the Enactus UK training weekend.

So that weekend started really early, and I mean really early. We all meet in front of the Cookworthy building at 5:00am to make the journey up to Grantham. There were eight of use including myself that piled into the van. There was Katie, Laura, Eleanor, Leecy, Fabian, Tom, Anthony, and myself that got up to get up to Grantham. When we left Plymouth I talked to Fabian for a short time then I was out like a light. We stopped once on the way up to Grantham, and that was at the poshest highway rest station I have ever been in. The rest stop had its own butcher! But after the quick ritzy stop we continued our journey. 

After Fabian took the wheel and finally got us to Grantham we pulled up to the place that we would be calling home for the next few days. The place that we would be staying at was called PGL, which I later found out stands for Parents Get Lost. Yep staying at a summer camps style place, but to be honest it wasn't as bad as some of you reading this might think it is. We got the room key after a bit of a wait where half of the group were off in pre-session to our actual training that the weekend had to offer. So it was myself, Tom, Fabian, and Anthony staying in a room, but since me and Tom had gotten to the room first we claimed our bunks first. But it was nice to be there. Made me miss working at Camp Lincoln this summer.

But after that me and Tom went to a career fair, which employers were looking for English born students, not international students. So it really didn't help me, but I still tried to make a few contacts. After that we all meet up as a group to get dinner. The food there was actually pretty good for what it was worth. After dinner we all went to the field house and had our kick off meeting. Enactus UK was still riding the high of winning the Enactus World Cup for the first time so everyone was extremely keen to hear what the speakers had to say. It was a lot of speakers and they gave out a few awards and grants where we, as Enactus Plymouth, got two grants. Shortly after that they explained how the weekend would work, and one of our many sponsors Enterprise Rent-a-car spoke, they also sponsored a bonfire and all the drinks for that later that night. I got a laugh of a rent-a-car company supplying drinks, when all we here in the states is 'don't drink and drive.'

We all when to the bonfire after and had a great time. We all called it quits early because we all know the next day was going to be a long day. We got up in the morning and right after breakfast we went right into sessions. It was a lot to take in a short period of time. I had three sessions back to back to back before lunch. Then after Lunch it was back to back to back again until we finally were done for the day. It was a lot of powerpoints early, and then later in the day it was a lot more hands on. But I will say some of the buildings that were on the property were stunning.

After all of our meetings we got a chance to relax for a bit, then we had to get ready for our send off dinner. We were all dressed nice and we got a great 3 course meal (it was only 2 courses for many of us because we were off to socialize), and we got to see the presentation that won the World Cup in person which was really great. After the presentation for some reason we got a picture with the World Cup. The rest of the night was filled with socializing and seemed a bit of a blur the next morning, but it was a lot of fun.

After slowly getting up the next morning we all headed off to the ropes course, where I realized I wasn't the only one moving slow that morning. We all had a go on the ropes course, and after we all jumped off a perfectly good tower, we went back to the field house to hear one more sponsor speak. Then we walked over to the other side of the camp and got a large group photo for Enactus UK.

We had one more meeting after the photo, and then we all packed our stuff got back in the van and we started our way back home. But as I slept on the way back to Plymouth I realized everything that I learned here will help me with my project Recreo: Renewing Creative Opportunity, and with any projects that I will work on when I am back home at PSU. That weekend I made new friends that will be around for a lifetime, and information that will shape how I do things, and interact with people for years to come. Thank you Enactus Plymouth for letting me come with you on such a great trip which let me learn so much. I hope I can put everything that I learned to use to make Recreo an amazing program.

So that was one of the things that I got a chance to do over the month. I have a few more updates that I need to give to you all, and those will be coming up over the next few weeks. Keep your eyes peeled for my experience watching the Devon Derby at Home Park, my first derby match here. As always I hope you have a good day!

-Tucker