Tualatin High School’s Future Health Professionals (HOSA) and Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) club members recently participated in state leadership conferences (SLC) held in Portland earlier this month.
While these are both leadership conferences, HOSA delves deeper into medical-based competitions and FBLA leans towards business-related competitions. Both provide great opportunities for enhancing leadership skills as well as learning more about their respective professions.
These annual state conferences are for students in these clubs interested in a more specific area of business or medicine. For example, HOSA has a section just for emergency-related skills for teams and competitors to compete in, including CERT skills, CPR/first aid and others. The list of skills to compete in is endless, from treating a patient in an “emergency” to giving a presentation on why dietitians are important.
SLC allows students to try whatever they want, and it can be beneficial in the future. The same can be said for FBLA, but of course, most if not all of their options are business-related.
In these competitions, if one places in the top three, they have the opportunity to advance and compete at nationals this summer. For FBLA, nationals will be held in Orlando, Fla., while HOSA’s national competition will be held in Houston, Tex. TuHS students Ayush Ghongadi, Lyan Abdulhaq, Dhruvika Vadapu, Elisa Ho, Faith Rhee, Nathan Ruybalid, Olivia Beauchemin and Hana Yokoi all qualified for nationals!
Junior and FBLA club member Jacob Lewis enjoyed his experience at SLC.
“SLC was awesome. Even though my presentation was only 20 minutes, there were so many workshops and different things to do. There was this interactive thing where we had to go around as a group and do different things to earn points for our charter. There were two big ceremonies, which were on Thursday and Saturday. Overall, it was so much fun, and I would love to go next year and obviously recommend others to join FBLA.”
Sophomore and HOSA officer Chloe Tjia-Boediawan also got a lot from her experience at SLC.
“I loved going to state this year. I met and bonded with a bunch of new people this year, from both our chapter and other schools’ chapters, felt confident doing this year’s skill for my event and went to workshops that taught me important skills for the medical field. I also went to a hypnotist show with some of the other students from our chapter, and it was actually so much fun and definitely worth going to.”
If you haven’t done so already, try to give these clubs a shot. SLC may be a few nights filled with unforgettable memories of new learning experiences and joy!
