A Day At The NHBC National High School Business Conference!

Hi! My name is Vipra. I attend the Virtual Secondary School as a grade 9 student. I first attended the MidtownTo X Illuminate conference by illuminate earlier this year and I loved it! I got the opportunity to then attend NHBC and I couldn't be more excited. In this blog, I will highlight what the conference looked like and what I learned!

We started the day with a workshop from Mark Grenon. He talked to us about his work at CPA being a forensic accounting specialist. He walked us through what he does and the different cases he has had to solve. Mark taught us the different ways criminals think and the strategies they use when they are committing their crimes. He also gave us tips for if we wanted to go into a similar field as him. One tip being, not to post too much of your information online like social media, Mark for example doesn’t use social media at all! This is so that dangerous criminals whom you are working with cannot use much against you.

We then had a workshop with Jodi Buckley!

Jodi talked to us about her job as a recruitment officer for CPA! She gave us tips for the future after post-secondary on how we can land a job, and the qualities many people miss when applying for one. She also shared with us how to fill our resumes and how important it is that it isn’t empty. CPA designation for example is a great opportunity for us to do just that!

In this image we can see the different qualities it is important for an individual to have to be successful in getting jobs, internships, etc.

We then were given a workshop by Illuminate educators. They taught us about mental fitness. We learned that we have 3 core muscles that make up our mental fitness: Saboteur muscle which the muscle that generates all of our negative emotions such as stress and procrastination; Sage muscles which generate our more positive emotions like calmness; and the self-command muscle where you are not fully in command of your mind, It generates mostly self-discipline kind of emotions.

After these amazing workshops, we got the opportunity to listen to university students and graduates who shared with us their experiences and advice. Lia Pasternak a Mcgill student, Cindy Jano a Western student, Alexander Tope a Guelph university student, and Vanne solo an Algonquin college student shared with us insight about how to prepare for university, what it’s like and how to stay organized. Even though I am only a grade 9 student I loved the

information and found it very useful for the future.

After a morning of super fun and informative workshops, we started working on case studies with our groups. We had to find out who was stealing money from a company by looking at different transactions and transaction logs. We then presented our solutions to judges who evaluated us based on a rubric that we were given with our case study.

On that note, this was an amazing opportunity and I am so grateful to have attended the National High School Business Conference by Illuminate, I got the chance to meet new people and learn new things. I cannot wait to attend more events in the future!

• Vipra