FBLA (Economics)

Backgrounds

FBLA is the largest student charity organization with the longest history around the world. It holds different types of contests related to Business every year. Because of Covid-19, FBLA China only had the opportunity to hold one offline contest– Beijing Economics National Contest (Beijing is the capital of China). This article is written to share my experience of this contest.

Since I have already mentioned a lot about how I prepared for FBLA, I will not write any more about it in this article.

My feelings about offline/online contests

Tell you the truth, offline activities make me feel much more excited than online activities. During the offline activities, I could immerse in the academic atmosphere by talking with others face-to-face in a formal place like meeting room. Before taking part into this offline Beijing National Economics FBLA contest, I have already taken part in an online Business National FBLA Contest. Generally speaking, the event was boring. It was hard for you to meet competitive students all over the provinces in China. The application used for preparing online events even had bugs at that time. For the talent show, the FBLA
official had no choice but to ask students upload their talent show videos and played videos.

Contests

It had three parts, Economic fundamentals (multiple economics choices), further comprehension (reading reference to answer questions), thinking and innovation (teamwork to answer questions). You could take part in an academic meeting (community of inquiry) if you apply for it in advance.

However, though I have prepared a lot, I still couldn’t get awards. (I got 89 in fundamental and anyone who reached 90 was national top 20th. Besides, the situation was similar in the part further comprehension.)

Analysis–why I couldn’t get top 20th awards.

I have summarized some reasons after this contest. First, I was not good at English compared with other students in Grade 11. I was only in Grade 10, and it was hard to find students in Grade 10 to get national top 20th award. Besides, although I couldn’t get top 20th, I still got great scores, they showed my preparation was meaningful. (Actually, I got the greatest scores in my school and still exceeded the majority of students at that time.)
For teamwork to answer questions, I was poor in speaking and that was my fault. It must let our group get fewer scores. In addition, a few members in our group were not capable.

My future plan and feelings about this year’s FBLA Economic Contest

My future plan

I still have many chances in the future. After all, I am only a Grade 10 student. I only need to get a few more scores to reach top 20th so I will take part in this contest in the future. By the way, in the next year, students in Grade 10 would be busy applying for universities. In other words, they won’t take part in the FBLA in the next year. And I was nearly the top student in Grade 10 so I want to get top 5th in the next year, not simply an award for top 20th. Last but not least, my preparation this year could also be used in the next year.

My feelings

Obviously, I felt regretted and sad. “Why I couldn’t get one extra point to get national top 20th?” I had this thought from time to time. Anyway, I have experienced a lot during the FBLA Economics Contest. I have met a lot of competitive students and discussed with each other about our school lives and hobbies. We came from different cities so we also talked about them. In other words, I not only comprehended Economics further but also felt relaxed during the contest.

Extra event: Community of inquiry

I applied for this event in advance and got the opportunity to take part in it luckily. It was an event that we discussed with each other to show our ideas about a given topic. This year, there were two topics A and B.

You could see the two topics here according to the FBLA official guide.

And I chose the topic B.

Further introduction about Community of inquiry

1. Each topic had 5 teams. Each team had at most 10 members. (And our team had 7 members since the other three were absent)

2. There were three parts during the community of inquiry. In part A, each team had to make a powerpoint to express their ideas to experts. In part B, each team needed to choose a representative to ask other group questions about the powerpoint they made. In part C, each team needed to choose a representative to answer questions from experts.

3. Each part will be judged. The students who performed well in any part will get the award of outstanding contributor.

4. Each team had one hour to discuss freely and one hour to prepare for the powerpoint. You were allowed to speak both English and Chinese during the discussion but you couldn’t use Chinese in the powerpoint.

What our team did to prepare for the powerpoint in part A

Firstly, we discussed a lot and tried to find our common idea. Our topic was about monopoly in big technology corporations. We originally decided to show advantages and disadvantages of it. Then we found it was time-consuming because we only had three minutes to explain in part A. Next, we only enumerated the disadvantages of it. And made the entire powerpoint finally.

There were two stories during this process. First, when we decided to only show only disadvantages of monopoly in part A, our representative of part A was a bit worried. He said he was capable enough to show all advantages and disadvantages of monopoly. (He was right, he did well in speaking English and his TOEFL score was 115.) We thought the experts may not get the points from our powerpoint if he talked too much. But he still tried to mention advantages of monopoly and failed. Anyway, we still thanked for his effort and he performed well finally. From this experience, I knew we should know how to accept and reject.
Besides, when we made the powerpoint, we were surprised to the requirement of the powerpoint–the length-width ratio of the powerpoint should be 17:4. (Because the screen had this length-width ratio.) That was so tough to make a powerpoint with this length-width ratio. You nearly saw nothing when you tried to preview it with your own laptop.

In order to prepare for the powerpoint, the members of our team ate nothing for dinner!

What I did in part C

I was the representative for part C in our group. It was a tough part since the experts would ask you questions and you didn’t know the questions in advance. To prepare for it,(Actually, it was hard to prepare for it.）I reviewed a lot of knowledge about the monopoly and even drew a mind map.

During the part C, the expert asked us how to prevent monopoly. I answered this question about imposing anti-trust laws. I used an example, Standard Oil Company, which was a monopoly company in eighteen seventy and it was split into 34 regional oil companies by the US government.

Finally I got the award of Outstanding Contributor. I felt proud of it.

My feelings about being a representative

I originally thought I couldn’t be a representative for our group. I was poor in speaking English and all members were in Grade 11 except me. However, my group members encouraged me to do it, and I performed not badly!

Of course when I sat down in the seat on the stage, I felt nervous. When the expert asked us questions, I nearly forgot all economic knowledge. Anyway, I tried to calm down and show my own ideas at that time. I tried to make me feel relaxed by paying my attention to other things (distracting my attention to being an outstanding contributor). Tell you the truth, on the stage, I just thought the lamplight towards the stage was quite bright. And when P immersed in that atmosphere, I didn’t feel nervous any more.
This was quite a memorable experience, I strengthened my skills of speaking English, met many new friends and learned how to analyze practical questions by using Economic knowledge I had learned in class.

Here is a photo about our team at that time. I will remember this unforgettable experience. I hope I will meet them in the future although it is lowly possible.