Sitting in the hotel room at BPA states, my friends and I heard a knock on the door. We opened the door, and I heard Mrs.Heavlin ask for me. Confused, I got up and walked toward her. That’s when she told me I had actually made it to finals for my event (economic research), and I had finals in about an hour.
This took me by surprise because when the first list came out for the 9 who made it to finals, my name was not listed, but later it was reported to me that they had accidentally left my name off the list and found it last minute.
When I realized how difficult it truly was to make it to finals, I not only felt excitement, but also lots of nerves. I put my suit jacket back on and immediately began to practice my speech again while my friends gave me “practice” judge questions.
While walking to the room where my event was hosted, I thought to myself how much work I had put into this presentation. From writing an essay over seven pages, editing, turning it into a speech, and then practicing presenting, I had spent several hours of hard work, and now I was finally seeing it pay off.
When I entered the room for finals, I could immediately feel the atmosphere of the room shift to an even greater amount of seriousness than I had ever previously felt before. I shook both of the judges’ hands, introduced myself, approached the podium, and began to present.
I had never presented in such an intimidating environment, so as soon as I finished, I couldn’t tell how it went. I knew I had no errors, and I answered the judges’ questions strongly, but the judges were very difficult to read, which led me to doubt my performance.
When I stepped out of the room and talked to my friends, they all told me how good I sounded from where they were sitting outside the room, which made me feel a lot better about how I did, but I didn’t truly get to know how I did until the next morning at the awards.
It was finally time for the awards, and we were all super excited to see how everyone did. I competed in both a team event and an individual event and was hoping to at least place with my team. The announcement for the placement of the team event came first, and sadly, our team didn’t make it. After another hour of waiting for my individual event to be called, I finally heard the announcer begin to say names for the top nine in my event. To my surprise, I heard my name get announced and immediately I got up to walk up to the stage.
When they first call everyone’s name, they call it in a random order, so nobody yet knows what place they have got until they are actually awarded on stage. I walked onto the stage with the other nine who placed and they began to call the place each person got. It started at the ninth and kept going down. By fourth place, I had yet to be called and was not only confused but also very excited. Finally, they called the top three, and that is when I heard my name get called for third place.
I received my plaque from the table and walked off stage. I never would have expected to place third out of 54 people who do my event. The weekend ended with success.
