On January 8, eight of DECA’s promising students qualified for States. This event was held at Boston Seaport on March 12.
While doubling the number of students, the team also has new faces in the group. Four sophomore students have joined the team and proven to be a great asset. Three of those sophomores, Victoria Kico, Sienna Pallang, and Lauren Maclean, are the first in 30 years of Norwood DECA students to qualify for the Integrated Marketing Campaign.
¨We were genuinely so shocked that we qualified. It was definitely a tough competition¨ said Victoria Kico as she talked about her experience of finding out that she and her partners made it to states.
Most students enjoy their afternoons by doing sports or hanging out with friends, DECA members do much more; they spend hours studying things that might not even be on the test.
¨ They´re studying through 2,000 questions across four different career clusters. So that’s marketing, business administration, finance, business ethics, law, hospitality, tourism, and they also have to know about DECA history. It’s insane!¨ said Adviser Niko Arranz.
Most of these students spend hours a day after school or even at home studying for these competition exams. Most members do all this studying on top of their homework for school.
¨We´ve been studying by using lots of Quizlets, review packets, and old exams,¨ said Sienna Pallang. ¨But the hardest part is definitely knowing all your vocabulary and studying for your exams, all of that together count for a big part of your scoring¨.
Even though States involve a lot of studying, concentration, and commitment, all these students end up gaining a lot of different things. Some gain confidence in front of a crowd, and others might finally feel confident in their studying and testing abilities.
¨Its phenomenal that all these students took a chance on this club that they just heard about this September, then all of a sudden they qualify for such a big thing like states,” said Arranz ¨For our seniors, it’s their last hurrah, and being able to share that with them is just amazing.¨
