dammit.

dammit dammit dammit.

we didn’t win.

we gave a great presentation. in fact, we gave what we all agreed was probably the best presentation we’ve given in college so far. we spoke well, we had good ideas, we did a good job. afterward one of the andersen guys told us we did a great job. we felt great about it.

then we went to the reception downtown in a nice restaurant. free appetizers (very tasty) and drinks (my first social cocktail in a business suit — i felt so grown-up). they announced second place… not us. we thought we had it. they announced first place. also not us. dammit dammit dammit.

here’s the worst/best part though: right after they finished with the “you all did a good job, we saw a lot of excellent presentations today…” speech, one of the judges came over to us specifically to tell us we did a good job. there were three or four teams (out of 12) that they really had to split hairs over to pick a winner, and we were right in there. as a matter of fact, he thought our plan was the best. it’s just that we forgot to go into how our plan would affect the employees, and one of the guys was really looking for us to discuss that more. we had decided while we were putting it together not to stress that point because we thought it was such a simple plan that talking about that wouldn’t really add much to the presentation. dammit. then, of course, we talked to another guy later that said, yeah, you guys had highest scores across the board except for not mentioning how it would affect the people…dammit.

so is it better to know you at least almost won 1000 dollars and a free trip to illinois, or worse because you knew how close you were if only you had added that one extra point in your speech? i don’t know, i’m pretty frustrated and annoyed right now. i mean, the winners got their picture taken with one of those huge novelty cardboard checks. how many times in my life will i be that close to winning a big novelty check? probably very few, and we blew it by such a small detail.

dammit dammit dammit.