By Matthew Jacoby
I recently took part in the DECA State Competition. DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) is a national organization of business students that encourages the development of business and leadership skills through academic conferences and competitions.
In DECA States there were over 2000 people from schools all over New York. Before the state competition all students either had to take a test based on their event or write a 20-page essay.
The competition was held in a convention center in Rochester, New York. For the Irvington students, this was over a six-hour train ride away. Once we got there, there was an opening event in which the DECA state presidents gave opening speeches. Being in the massive ballroom with 2,000 other students was a new experience for all of us there. We were encouraged to go around and meet some new people and maybe make some new friends.
I was the only person from Irvington that was competing on the first night. At states, competitors had to do a role play with a judge which caused a lot of stress beforehand. You were given a scenario and different topics that you have to talk about. You are graded on how well you explain your different topics as well as your twenty-first-century skills. These include your creativity, communication, and critical thinking.
My topic was the principles of finance. This was the most basic level of finance where everything was broad. In my role play, I was a bank manager while the judge was a new employee. I needed to talk to him about security, privacy, and customer confidentiality. This was not one of the things that I studied; however, we are given 10 minutes to prepare what we are going to say. I wrote down some notes about each performance indicator so that I could talk about them when I was in the role play. I also made a worker’s manual and a business card for the creativity aspect. I felt that I had not done as well as regionals, so after the role-play, I asked the judge about what I could do better in the future.
After the roleplay, I was done competing at states and I had to wait two days to see how I did. On Thursday the rest of the people competed and there were also workshops that you had to do. These workshops were on different business topics such as a game where you pretend like you are on wall street as well as one where you had a problem that you had to solve with a business. These can help you learn more about different business topics and it is a way to pass the time while all of the other people compete.
On Friday, there was the award ceremony. It lasted over three hours due to there being over 50 different topics. If you had a top 10 test score and/or a top 10 role-play score you received a medal. If you were 5-10 overall in your category you received another medal and if you were top 5 overall you get a little trophy and you also qualify for ICDC which is an international DECA competition.
From our school Tane Kim, Luke Mitchell, Me (Matthew Jacoby), Clio Salles-Spar, and Alex Pollack all received medals and Clio and Alex qualified for ICDC.
