A Couple Days in Pittsburgh

This past weekend I went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with Beta Alpha Psi (the accounting service fraternity I’m involved in). We had 3 separate groups within our organization go, and my group had 4 people, including me. My group presented in the Best Practices competition, in the collaboration and leadership section. Our topic was our presentation on campus a week prior, on the tax implications of NIL deals. These deals are becoming more prevalent as they are “name, image and likeness” brand deals based on the skills of the student athlete.

To start off the day, we got up early in the morning and left by 7:30 a.m. It was a 4-hour drive to Pittsburgh and once we arrived, there were various lectures and introductions. We could then pick some of the presentations we wanted to attend, and I decided on one about public accounting myths/truths and the other was on imposter syndrome.  We also had to complete a fraud activity, which involved finding outstanding checks that weren’t paid and which employee was participating in fraudulent activity. We had 50 minutes to complete it and my team not only got 1^st place, but beat the record at 32 minutes! We each received a beanie for attending and a visor for winning the fraud competition. After all the speakers and lectures were wrapped up for the day, all 15 of us from ONU headed to Hard Rock Café for a nice dinner. To finish up the night, we practiced our presentations for the next day.

For the second day in a row, I woke up at 6:30 in the morning, which is insanely early for me. We all ate a nice hotel breakfast and then went in our respective rooms to compete. My teams presentation went very well and we got many compliments on how unique our presentation was. After the presentations wrapped up, the event coordinators treated us to a very fancy lunch consisting of a side salad, mashed potatoes, chicken and Oreo chocolate mousse (my favorite dessert). To conclude the event weekend, there were a couple more speakers to wrap everything up and then they announced the winners from our presentations that morning. To our surprise, two of the three teams we brought from Ohio Northern got first place. My team was one of those that won, we had nine people in our competition. Our prize for winning first place was an invitation to the national conference in Las Vegas and free flights there and back! As you all can probably guess we were ecstatic and our advisor, Professor Crowley was very proud of us all. We started the drive back to Ada and got DQ as a mini celebration for our hard work during the weekend.

I am very grateful I got the opportunity to improve my presentation skills, go to Pittsburgh for a night and now get the opportunity to go to Las Vegas!