A WEEK off school got Overnewton Anglican Community College student Justine Carzino further than she thought.
The Hillside student took part in a recent Business Strategy Game as part of Australian Business Week.
Her team’s winning entry clinched not only first place at the national competition in Sydney but also third in the Global Enterprise Challenge judged in Scotland, behind America and Japan.
The experience has been shaping for the Year 12 student who hopes to pursue law and commerce in university.
She first heard of Australian Business Week from her careers adviser.
“She knew I was interested in law and commerce,” Justine said.
“I thought it goes for a week during the holidays, but I thought I would go for it anyway.”
The experience was exhilarating, she said.
“During the business strategy game … we were given our own company in a market and we had to compete against other companies, make business decisions on profit, product, factories, employees … everything.
“And all of this was reflected once we got our results back, which told us whether we lost or gained market share and things like that.”
Justine also had a chance to act as a barrister during a mock court trial as part of Australian Business Week.
“For me the mock trial was the highlight for the week.
“I was so nervous about it beforehand.
“But I gained confidence, I was able to stand up in court,” she said.
Their task in Sydney was to create a product that educated eight to 12 year-olds on global citizenship in 24 hours.
“We also had to create a PowerPoint presentation to convince customers of our product and make advertisements,” Justine said.
Her team came up with a trading card game since other teams had already seized the idea of creating a board game.
The 24-hour deadline seemed impossible, but Justine said she learnt the importance of teamwork seeing how much her team could achieve just by cooperating.
All the participants were from different schools. “I didn’t meet them (her team members) until Australian Business Week,” she said.
They learnt to be persistent, motivated and patient.
“You have so many different ideas and everyone thinks of something new every five seconds… you’ve got to find the best way to decide on things,” Justine said.
It was only a week after the competition in Sydney that Justine’s team found out they had come in third internationally.
“We were absolutely rapt … because a lot of the teams were very very good,” she said.
