By Shivani Kondubhatla, State Vice President
Westwood High School
With summer in full swing, it’s the perfect time to get a headstart on preparing for your DECA Prepared Event. The prompts are out (for the applicable events), and DECA+ is filled with great samples and resources to look through and get some inspiration. Here are a list of a few tips and tricks to make sure that you are ready to go for when DECA season officially starts:
Choose Something You’re Passionate About
Winning the coveted glass or making it to ICDC does not always come from choosing “easier” events, but rather ones that you are genuinely interested in. Summer is the perfect time to find the right event for you. Is there a social issue that you are very passionate about? Maybe Project Management is the way to go. Do you like to research and collaborate with local businesses? Then consider Operations Research. Here is a great resource to help you discover what event you want to do. But whatever you choose, make sure that you genuinely are interested in it and can write a report/make a presentation on it!
Make a Game Plan for the School Year
When school’s in session, it can get pretty hectic balancing schoolwork with your DECA project. Your life will be 10x easier if you make a checklist right now of what you want to accomplish each month to ensure your DECA project gets completed. My partners and I competed in Operations Research, and we created a strict schedule that we followed throughout the year. We made sure to reach out to local businesses and do more research on the prompt in August, and we finished conducting our research in September-October. Here are some great timelines to follow if you need help making your game plan.
Research, Research, Research
Summer is the perfect time to really understand your event and the business acumen you need to acquire. For the events with prompts, this article has so many links to further understand your prompt and brainstorm. If you are doing an Entrepreneurship event, for example, be sure to be very familiar with financials, different markets, etc. If you aren’t too confident with these, then start learning about it right now! Judges can tell if you know what you’re talking about, be it while judging your report or your presentation, so do lots of research now! It’s also a great time to start looking at other’s reports/presentations, which can be found on DECA+. You can get a good idea of what to implement, things that worked, etc. (but make sure not to copy or plagiarize their work!)
Start Writing or Making Your Presentation
If you’re feeling very productive this summer, you can even get started on your actual report or presentation. You want to become best friends with your event’s guidelines, which can be found on DECA+. Use that as the blueprint of your report, and start outlining and writing your report on Google Docs or Word. Don’t worry about graphics or making your report look pretty just yet — just focus on the content and remember it’s just the beginning. Take your time! Check out this written event guide for more assistance.
We hope these tips help you get started on your prepared event this summer. Good luck!