every accomplishment starts with the decision to try

“a person can succeed at almost anything for which they have unlimited enthusiasm.”
–charles m. schwab

I saw this quote on Twitter today, and it perfectly summarizes my first presentation assignment in my Buyer-Seller Relationships class today. Last week, we were asked by our professor to create a “one-way presentation” on anything—literally ANYTHING—and then sell our topic to the class in an 8 minute presentation. We then proceeded to break off into groups and brainstorm ideas. My group consisted of four other ladies, also Marketing Majors, who were all very passionate about our similar area of study. After a bit of small talk, we started discussing Virginia Tech’s marketing department, classes that inspired us, what we wished we could change and further develop within our college. Then it hit us. We had so many great, marketable ideas to present, so we ran with the topic. After two out-of-class meetings, we were ready to share our exciting ideas with our class.

Our presentation today went great. We received such positive feedback from our classmates, and it is wonderful to know that other students are as passionate about our subject topic as we are. It is truly refreshing to be surrounded by intelligent people who are excited about what they do and who want to make an impact. Our professor gave praise for our ideas for improvement, and even offered his endorsement should we wish to actually pitch our ideas to the university or prospective sponsors. WOW.

After class, my group stayed after class for nearly 20 minutes to discuss our ideas with our professor. We decided that our major presentation project for the semester would build on the foundation that we set today. Our professor loved our ideas, and offered to excuse us from some of the other class assignments in order to conduct research and interviews for our presentation. He had an even bigger vision for our efforts than we could even imagine: remaining in Blacksburg after graduation to further help develop and implement our changes, or even spreading our program to other schools.

I will write about our ideas more in depth as our project unfolds, but the basis involves developing more social and networking opportunities for marketing students with potential employers. The majority of recruiters that visit Tech are interested in accounting, finance, economics, and business information technology majors. Our marketing students have so much to offer the advertising and communications world, but we struggle with making the connections with firms. We want to help equip students with the social skills needed to interact with potential employers, while also making students more confident and more aware of the industry.

Ultimately, I am just thrilled. Thrilled to go to Virginia Tech, thrilled to be a senior, thrilled to be studying marketing, thrilled to love my major and my work, thrilled to be surrounded by students who feed off of each others creativity, thrilled to have professors that inspire me and believe in my ambitions. Developing these relationships has been invaluable to my development not only as a marketing student, but as an individual as a whole. Days like this just excite me for all of the possibilities ahead of me. I am very grateful for the opportunity to be here.

In the spirit of loving my school and a wonderful day, I've included this picture of Burruss Hall that I took with Instagram this afternoon.