#SAMily

This past week I was able to attend the Society of the Advancement of Management Case Competition and let me say, it was a wild ride. The competition began with a bit of confusion over how to get to the Detroit airport, but thankfully it all worked out. Next, our flight got delayed by four hours and the passengers next to us were talking about how the same flight was cancelled the day before. Thankfully, our plane finally arrived and we made it to Rhode Island safely. We then checked into the hotel, ate dinner and crashed for the night to then be up and at the conference at 10am the next morning.

We attended a LinkedIn workshop and ate lunch at the nicest cafeteria ever. It was more like a store, and the conference provided us with a designated amount of money we could use. After lunch we took a test for the Knowledge Bowl, which if you get the highest score out of your school in our division, you move on to a second round where you play Jeopardy. I am proud to say I had a high number of zero points in Jeopardy, but it was sill super fun. Then we attended a panel of the student executive board, an incredibly nice President’s dinner and the opening ceremony where your presentation time is determined. They draw your school out of a bowl, and you get to pick your time. Both of our divisions got times we wanted, and the next day was competition day.

We spent the entire morning practicing our parts and trying to not freak out. We gave our presentation and then chilled before lunch. We had a lot of positive feedback from the judges but still were not sure how well we did. After, we then went back to our hotel and in the evening, we went out to a nice dinner.

The next day, I played Jeopardy and lost terribly but Drew got second. The Company that we worked on the case study for offered to take the schools on a tour of their facility, so we attended that, and it was so cool. We learned about building boats and what a shipping yard looks like. The last thing we had was the Awards Dinner, which was extremely nice, but I was very nervous to see how we did. They announced the Case Competition awards last, so we had to wait a while to hear our results, but we ended up placing first and the other division placed second! We were so surprised. 

Overall, it was an amazing trip that I learned so many things from and made so many good memories, especially ones about goats and carnivals.