Key Club Cali-Nev-Ha District Convention 2009

Ok so DCON was actually April 2-April 4 but I was writing my monthly article on it so I decided to wait and just post my article up instead of just writing about it.

What makes Key Club different from other service clubs? What makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of high school kids to help as much as they do? The answer is passion. Passion is what makes Key Clubbers give up their weekends to plant trees or clean up a beach. It is not only a passion for helping people but it is a passion for the organization itself. Key Club is special in the fact that this passion, this spirit lies within every Key Clubber from generation to generation. And the way that spirit is passed on to the next line of Key Clubbers is though an event like DCON.

As much as a freshman hears statements like “250,000 members” and “worldwide club”, they can never realize how huge Key Club is until they see the amount of people and the amount of spirit at District Convention. DCON helped my members realize that this is not just some club that sits around and talks about random topics, but it is instead a club that is affecting people all over the world and making a difference, no matter how small.

DCON shows the organization at its best. For members new to Key Club or members who haven’t quite gotten their spirit, DCON shows that this club is organized, influential, and in many ways “magical”. The faces on my members when they first saw general session, with everyone showing their spirit and trying as hard as they could to win that spirit stick, can only be described as amazing. At DCON, you can literally see pride of Key Club. Whether it be new members staring their incredible journey through this remarkable organization, or seniors preparing to say the final goodbyes to the club that gave them so much, DCON is an emotional experience that must be seen and felt to be truly understood.

After building the passion, DCON also gives its attendees the tools to transform that passion into service and work. Each and every one of the workshops and speeches given at DCON adds to the knowledge of each attendee and helps this organization learn and grow. At DCON I have met many people and received masses of information and advice from the older members. I will never forget those people, and this experience we shared together. I will put the information that I have received to good use throughout this year, and when my time in Key Club is done, I will pass on my knowledge and continue the cycle of learning and growth. My members and I learned how Key Club can do anything and how they can help in making the impossible possible. It’s a clique I know, but that’s what Key Club is all about, making memories and making a difference.

Chris Okamura Key Club Division 25 West Reseda High School Vice-President

Cal HOSA SLC 2009

Last weekend I went to Sacramento for California HOSA State Leadership Conference 2009! It was a blast and I have a lot of great memories that I know will stay with me for the rest of my life.

There were 21 of us on the trip (19 students, 2 advisors). We took the Gray Hound bus to and from Sacramento. We left from the San Fernando station at about 11pm. We made several stops on the way there. Kyle and I took every opportunity to play Street Fighter or House of the Dead at every single station arcade (Yes we are really geeky and asian…so what). I discovered that I can fall asleep and still chew gum at the same time! I have no idea how, maybe its just a reflex or something. It took us about 7-8 hours till we got to Sacramento. Once we got to the Grey Hound station in Sacramento, we had to walk 5 blocks to the Hilton hotel with all of our luggage. Now realize that we were there for 4 days! We packed textbooks, video games, food, rice cookers, water boilers, etc. SO needless to say that walking that distance was a pain in the ass.

We final get to the hotel. We are the only school there so far. Some of us go the pool, some of us go the fitness center, and some of us just go into the room and just go and play Super Smash Bros. (Once again, WE ARE REALLY GEEKY WE KNOW!) So then we ordered some pizza. In my room it’s Kyle, Joshua, and myself. Joshua is on his computer, Kyle in doing pushups or something, whatever. And I am sitting on the bed talking, eating some pizza. Then Mr. Urbina (our advisor) walks in our room to check for curfew. He takes a bite of out last slice of pizza and throws it back in the box. We were like WTF!! So we waited for him to leave, then we took the pizza and balanced the slice on the handle of his door. We took pictures and everything; it was pretty funny (at that late at night in a hotel room with nothing to do, everything is funny). SO the three of us are talking and I turned to ask Kyle a question. He answers back and I say something else and there is no response…I look over at him…he fell asleep…in the span of less than 3 seconds. So Josh and I start talking. After about 20 minutes I hear Kyle say something. I yell his name, and he yells “Grapefruit”. Josh and I start laughing and we look at each other and say “Grapefruit?”. Kyle responses “Go get me some grapefruit!”…then he stops moving and is now deeply sleeping. Then there is a knock on the door. I answer it. Mr. Urbina throws the pizza back in our room and runs back into his. SO we put the empty boxes in front of his door…its all good.

The first day of the SLC starts. Its really good. Most of our school picked the Creative Problem Solving event so we all had the first test for that in the morning. Its was all common sense problems so it was relatively simple. We went to grab some food, and we went back to the hotel, which was right across the street from the convention center so it was really convenient. Once we got back to the hotel, we all basically split off into out our groups. There were 3 rooms that had a Wii in them, my room, Mr.Urbina’s room (across the hall), and Neil’s room (at the end of the hall). All of us were running between each room to either talk to someone, or play a different game. We also had opening ceremonies that night so it was a pretty good day.

The next day, I didn’t have any events so I spend the day hanging out with people, and meeting some new people from different schools. I even saw some of my friends that I haven’t seen for a long time that I just happened to run into at this convention. We also saw the scores for Creative Problem Solving posted up. Three of my schools teams made it through to the second round, one didn’t. So we spend that night studying and planning for Creative Problem Solving, as well as our other events.

So this was probably my busiest day of the trip. I had my Sports Medicine exam in the morning, and the second round of Creative Problem Solving was in the afternoon. The sports medicine exam was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. There were about 25 people taking the exam and I was nervous going into the test. Once I started taking it, I realized that I knew a lot of the answers. There were a total of 50 questions and only 13 people were moving on to the second round. Now the night before, Kyle, Josh and I were discussing our plan for Creative Problem Solving. We decided to just make up a fake prompt just to see if our plans and strategies would work. So my team is Josh, Kyle, Emily and myself. We get into the room and the prompt is almost exactly what the fake one was that we worked on the night before. So we had all of our preparations made and we thought we had it pretty much down. We gave our presentation and we felt good about our performance. We all went back to the hotel and once again started playing Super Smash Bros. And Trauma Center (We were at conference for medical students, what game do you think we’d be playing.) Later I went for a walk and decided to check if the scores were posted for Sports Medicine. I didn’t make the cut for the second round. I went into the headquarters and begged to know what my score was. They told me that I only missed 7 questions out of the 50, and that I tied someone but I missed the tiebreaker question so I didn’t make the cut

The last “real night” we had closing ceremonies and the dance. Some of us had knowledge tests and some second round competitions. The closing ceremonies were good, but extremely long because of all the events and all of the finalists and placements, and awarding. Reseda did very well, almost everyone placed at least 5th place in at least one thing. My group placed 5th in Creative Problem Solving, out of about 20 teams. The dance was really bad. The music was a little too loud and it really wasn’t that fun.

We left the next day. We once again walked to the Grey Hound station. Made the same stops on the way back. It was pretty standard bus ride, nothing really exciting. The trip overall was a great experience. Sure there was some drama and some relationships that changed, but it didn’t ruin the trip. Those changes have yet to be seen as good or bad, however I have a good feeling that those relationships and friendships have grown and changed for the better thanks to this amazing trip.