On Friday, December 2nd, certain Seminole High School (SHS) students came dressed to impress. Dressed in business attire, students in the club Business Professionals of America (BPA) came to school ready to channel their inner entrepreneur for their regional competition. The students traveled by bus to Seminole State College (SSC) to compete against other students in their division. Students came prepared with posters, monitors, projectors, and more. When students were not presenting, they were busy rehearsing and preparing their projects. Most students competed in two divisions, judged and non-judged. Some students decided to compete in groups of 2 to 4 people, while others chose to do individual competition. Each student picked their division based on their own strengths, weaknesses, and interests. 

IB sophomore Soumya Bodhanapu says that her experience overall was fun. For her judged event she did small business team and for non-judged she did legal office procedures.

“My experience was good. This is my second time competing, and I think I did well. The best part about it was preparing with my team,” she expresses. 

The BPA competition allowed for bonding time for students as they got to know their peers better, and show their prowess in areas of business. 

Being an adult is hard and BPA gives you the chance to be an adult in the business world, while having fun with friends. Another participant in the BPA competition is IB sophomore Liyana Ahmed. 

Speaking of her experience, she states: “I had a really fun time. It was my first time competing and overall it was interesting. I did a group competition and I was lucky enough to have my assigned time in the morning. After we finished, we got to chill and listen to our other friends stress and practice their project.” 

Akshitha Pinnamarju, an IB sophomore, was another person who competed in this year’s competition. Last year she worked in an individual division, but this year she decided to compete with a group. “Overall, the competition went alright. I did a judged and non judged event. For my judged event it was the presentation management team and for the non-judged it was legal office procedures. It was not my first time and my experience was [meh]. It was good, but towards the end it got stressful because of the bus situation and the late times for our events. I think we did pretty well. We could have done better if we were not stressed with the times but we did good. But, the best part of BPA was spending time with my amazing group.” 

The competition was to qualify for states, which will be held later this school year. Each event usually sends 2 to 3 teams to states, but this may differ for some events. From there, students will compete with people all around Florida to earn a spot in nationals. SHS students came prepared, but so did its competitors. Some of the biggest competitors include Crooms, Hagerty, and Lake Brantley. Results aside, each and every person at the competition did a phenomenal job with their projects and Seminole High School is proud to have such amazing students represent them. Now that the hard work is done, students can only do one thing–wait.