I got involved with case competitions my first semester at Leeds when a senior invited me to be on his team for the annual diversity and business ethics case competition, or DBECC as we fondly call it. DBECC is one of the most competitive undergraduate case competitions that invites Leeds students to compete against other top business schools in the region for $10,000 in prize money, but first you have to go through preliminary rounds to determine the top two teams who will be representing Leeds. I had never done DECA or FBLA in high school, and I had no idea what a case competition even was. And after several 3AM nights working on the presentation, I was absolutely crushed when I got the email that we weren't advancing onto the final rounds. I went back to my room and sobbed. However, even though my introduction to case competitions didn't end in prize money and glory, it did start me on the path of doing case competitions. Since then, I have gone on to represent North America in Procter & Gamble’s CEO Challenge Global rounds after beating teams of undergraduate and graduate students from MIT Sloan, Duke University, Georgia Tech, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, and more. My team was part of the top 0.067% in the world after 30,000 applicants originally entered the competition. As leaders, our endeavors don't always end in success, but there are always lessons to be learned. DBECC introduced me to the beauty of creating a team, working long hours, and presenting a presentation in less than a week. Even though we didn't move onto finals, the fact that the senior reached out to me always stuck with me, and inspired me to want to continue to pass on the torch to other underclassmen.