(catered: C-creativity)
Being someone who’s extremely intrigued by the corporate world and its abilities, I took part in the WFBL competition. World Future Business Leaders (WFBL) is an international educational initiative platform for high school students interested in business from all over the world. It helps students participating with the opportunity to learn, compete, grow, and lead the future innovation and economic growth.
LO1- strength and growth
The WFBL offers four business subjects, out of which I had to appear for any one. Marketing, international business, entrepreneurship, and management. I ended up testing myself for the entrepreneurship project because I already had the necessary knowledge required. In this situation, it was important to recognize my strengths so that I wouldn’t end up wasting my time over things I already knew. And as far as the weaknesses are concerned, these were important for the areas of growth. When I started prepping for the examination- reading through the 94 page source provided by the WFBL, I realized that there were a lot of things that I didn’t know of, and so it left a space for new understandings.
LO2- challenge and skills
The purpose of the competition is to challenge, so it ’ s not easy. I read it as an opportunity to develop my thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as examine my existing business knowledge. The WFBL competition course contains the current mainstream direction of business. It helped me to integrate my knowledge into practice and to better understand the abstract concepts of various business subjects, which was at times, tricky. As mentioned earlier, there were things that I didn’t know of- The challenging part was also that I had to understand everything on my own. Usually, we appear for school exams wherein our doubts are catered by the school faculties. However, in this scenario when I came across something that I didn’t know of or couldn’t understand, I had to search extensively.
Other than that, time management was a major issue. It was a benefit that the WFBL team had provided a source for preparation, however, it was difficult to pitch in the time to actually read that document. Honestly, I couldn’t even read one-fourth of the document. To end, I think It is crucial for our personal development to overcome challenges, it helps us become a stronger version of ourselves and helps us gain a sense of stability and resilience.
LO7- Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and action
As WFBL is a global competition, the initiators obviously couldn’t physically reach different countries, that too in the time of covid. As a student appearing for the exam, the ethics of choices and action were directly affected- I had to make sure that I’m giving it with honesty and ethics. It felt as if I had a responsibility, both to myself and to the WFBL team. We had to put our microphones and cameras on, and couldn’t open an additional tab.
To conclude, from the IB point of view I enhanced learner profiles such as knowledgeable, balanced, inquirer, thinker, and (now)reflective. Moreover, the activity links to the IBDP subject business management because the background knowledge I had about entrepreneurship was majorly taught in those classes.
The highlight of the experience was definitely the time of appearing for the test. There were certain questions that I had no clue about. Questions like these were the highlight because it helped me gain new knowledge. Overall, even though I couldn’t achieve a good enough score, it was a new experience and it provided knowledge that I wouldn’t necessarily find in my day-to-day life. However, if I were to give this test again, I would definitely put in time to prepare for it. All the learnings from this experience will help me in my future career as it is related to business. Not only that, but even in the normal business management classes in school, as well as participating in the business club.
