About me
I am currently a freshman at Seattle Pacific University. I run cross country and track, specifically the 1 mile, 3k, 5k, and 800 meters. I enjoy running, reading, traveling, and spending time with my friends. I graduated from Selah High School as valedictorian of my class and with honors.
LifeSmarts/FCCLA
My sophomore year of high school, I was volunteered to join a club called LifeSmarts. LifeSmarts is a consumer and personal finance-based literacy quiz bowl open to students in the 6th-12th grades. Participants focus on five key topics: consumer rights & responsibilities, the environment, health & safety, personal finance, and technology & workforce preparation. Teams from all over the nation participate in the national competitions which have been held for the last thirty years.
My high school had a team, and after the state competition, one of the members left, and I was thrown into her place a month before nationals, with no training. Our coach gave me a binder full of study materials and a permission slip to go to Washington DC in less than a month. Long story short, I turned in that permission slip the next day.
Competitions
We were a part of two separate organizations, one with LifeSmarts and the National Consumers League, and the other with FCCLA (Family Career and Community Leaders of America.
IIn chronological order of all our competitions, my team and I flew to the LifeSmarts National Conference in April of 2022 and then went on to place 4th in the nation in Washington DC. The next time we competed was in July of 2022 in San Diego, California for FCCLA, where we took 3rd nationally. For the next round of competition, my team and I had to qualify first by completing an online knowledge quiz, and the top 40 teams in the nation were then invited to compete in person in Columbus, Ohio in November of 2022. At the Columbus competition, all 40 teams compete in head-to-head matches and individual quizzes against other teams to earn points. At the end of the competition, the top 16 scores were invited to compete at the National competition held in July, and then we competed again in July in San Diego, where we took 3rd. We then flew to Columbus, Ohio for the regional matches, and we took the top scores so we went on to compete at Nationals again in Cincinnati, Ohio a few months later, where we took 4th. We were then invited to the FCCLA/LifeSmarts competition held in Denver, Colorado later in July of 2023. In January of 2023 was our next competition. This was the Washington State LifeSmarts quiz bowl to determine which team was going to represent Washington at the LifeSmarts National Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio in April. This consisted of multiple buzzer rounds and head-to-head. After winning the state title, we went on to compete in Ohio and secured the 4th place title. A few months later was the National FCCLA conference that we qualified for in Columbus. At this competition, I was assigned the role of the team captain and the responsibilities of leading the team. We competed in nearly 48 hours of tight competition, with numerous head-to-head rounds, individual buzzer matches, and rounds where each member had an opportunity to showcase their knowledge. This teamwork led us to the National Stage, where we competed for 1st place in front of 8,000 people, and for viewers watching the live-streamed feed. Our team overcame all of these competitions and we took 1st place in the Nation.