Ya, that sounds good to me. Just send me yours when you get a chance. I should be able to look at it tonight.

During my tenure in high school, I was a part of the inaugural class of the Entrepreneurship of Thousand Oaks High School Academy (EThOS). The focus of my last year in the Academy was a business simulation where as a group we created a virtual business where we bought and sold products from other participating schools. All of our work was aimed towards participating in a live trade fair where high schools across the country came together to sell products and compete for various awards. As the elected CEO of our mock business, my job was to oversee all of the students in EThOS and make sure that we were reaching our goal of creating a competitive business.

Due to it being the first time that my school had attempted this simulation, the majority of the faculty that were in charge were unorganized and not completing the necessary steps for our Academy to be able to travel to the trade fair. This meant that I had to help the faculty figure out the logistics instead of being able to focus solely on my work. I had to learn how to properly budget my time to be able to finish my schoolwork, plan the trip, and still be able to go to work after school. I created a schedule for myself that laid out exactly when I would work on the different parts of my life. Following the schedule strictly made it so I was able to make sure I completed everything I needed to get done. Creating and following this schedule taught me about the discipline and organization it takes to be able to complete all necessary tasks when given a full workload.

The biggest obstacle that I faced in EThOS happened about halfway through the school year. Fellow students had stopped completing their tasks in a timely manner, morale was down throughout, and people had been considering dropping out of the Academy. I knew that I needed everyone to stay if we were to be ready for the trade fair. I decided to call a group meeting where everyone was allowed to air their feelings. I discovered that the main problem was that some students felt that they were doing a large portion of the work while others were not. This led me to create a weekly newsletter where I acknowledged the work that people had been doing throughout the week. This allowed people to feel proud for being recognized for their completed work, helped motivate everyone to do their assigned work, and showed that everyone was indeed contributing to the business. Due to the changes that I made, no one dropped out of the Academy, and we were able to prepare our business for the trade fair. Solving this problem helped teach me about leadership and how to work in groups. I was able to learn about different ways to lead people through solving a problem, as well as how to work alongside someone to do the same.

Even though I had to deal with multiple problems during my time as CEO of EThOS, it was an extremely worthwhile experience. I was able to lead our company through the trade fair where we beat out hundreds of schools for three awards; two for our business plan, and one for our website. This set the record for most awards for a school’s first appearance. Personally, EThOS is where I learned about the discipline, organization, problem solving, and leadership that I used throughout my college career, both in my individual work and group projects. These are the same qualities that I plan on using during my time in law school.

While a part of EThOS, one aspect of the simulation was creating deals with the other participating schools. I had to come to agreements with them on different conditions, which meant that we had to create rudimentary contracts that we both had to follow. Although the contracts were basic, they sparked an interest in contract law for me. So much so that last year when my grandmother’s rental property’s term was up she asked me to look over the contract and help figure out what her options were for renewing it for another term.