What an impressive next generation …

As I mentioned on yesterday’s blog, I was at nearby town for the DECA conference over the weekend. For those who don’t know about DECA, this is a business conference solely created for the students who are interested in competing in many aspects of business. They will have the chance to present their ideas, brand new ideas like those real entrepreneurs out there. They will need to solve a real time problem, some of them are pretty complex within 10 minutes and another 10 minutes to present their ideas and convince the judges.

Unfortunately, I signed up for a chaperone not judge, so I don’t have off-hands experience listening to their ideas. But, I was chatting with the parents who are the judges. A lot of them are being impressed and in fact my ex-manager in chain told me that he would hire one of the students right off. We are talking about a teenager. How impressive!

Being there itself is an experience for me. I am all in! I am going to support Pepper, my fourteen year old, all the way. Can you feel my excitement here? Yes. You would be too if you were here with me. Imagine this, 1300 students dressed in suits! Yes, I couldn’t tell them apart from the first grad students off college aside from looking at their young faces closely. They acted professional, polite but yet fun. I must say, they were all great kids. Kids that were rather spent their weekend here. Kids were rather spent hours and hours preparing for their presentation than playing video games. Of course, they do that too. I guess that is the fun being young. Though, I must say the youngsters these days have harder life than we did in term of being competitive. I wonder how high their stress level are …

Some of the leaders are very electrifying but yet very funny.  The coordinator of the DECA reminded all of us, though they look like young adults, they may look quite professional … underneath that they are just kids. They were asking us not to say praises that may raise their hope or giving any points that below a certain mark that may discourage them. After all, we want them to come back and keep trying. We want them to have the best learning experience.

Are you impressed yet! I am so impressed with these next generations that I think I will not call them kids anymore! Wait! But they are …

What kind of thought that I want to send to all of us this time? Well … Be sure to get involved in our kids’ activities. We will never know what we would find and it would as inspiring to us as much as to our next generation. I know I left the conference with incredible feeling of excitement knowing somehow that our next generation would probably do better than us. Isn’t this the dream of all parents?

Note: Pepper, said that this conference has changed her. She feels like she is different person now but not sure what.

Until next stop,
Journey of Life