Now that you've had the experience of being in an STN competition, what advice can you give next year's students and teams for the contest you were in?  State which contests you competed in and list some of the advice you want to pass on to help next year's team.  You have two contests to write about, the Sweet 16 and the other STN contest you participated in.  

For our three students who remained here on campus, tell me about your 4th quarter project and what you are planning on doing.  

It was a looooong flight but we made it to Florida in one piece without any problems.  All of our luggage made it and none of the kids got sick along the way so it was a great day for us!  We arrived around 3:30 pm and got our vans loaded up and left for our vacation homes.  The homes are great and the students especially enjoyed the game rooms set up in each garage.  They are playing pool, darts, or air hockey in their free time.  We had dinner at Golden Corral, a buffet, and then head out to Target for some grocery shopping and supplies.  We did have a few vans get lost along the way to dinner so that set us back about an hour so by the time we got home it was pretty late.  The kids went right to bed and got to sleep in this morning, some not waking up until after 9:30 am.  

We had a nice brunch this morning and since then we've had the kids work on homework in the roughly two hours we have to spare before we leave for the Amway Center tour.  It was going to be too much of a rush to go and find a mall close to the Amway Center so we decided to take it easy and give the kids some time to get any homework done.  

Despite the sun being out it's still chilly.....temps are in the 50's today so the CKTV hoodies are coming in handy!

We are only about a week away from our long awaited trip to Orlando, Florida.  Are you excited yet?  If not, check your pulse because you might not be alive!  I don't know about you but even though this is my third time to Florida for this convention, I am already excited about it and I hope you are too.  We've worked all year to fundraise and better our skills as media students to represent our class, our island, and our state at this competition.  While we are a young class with a lot of newbies with no contest experience, I feel good about our chances to do well.  Whether that is good enough to place in the top three?  That's hard to say right now.  I can tell you that this will be the toughest convention we've been to yet in terms of the amount of schools, students, and talent involved.  Everyone is taking this convention seriously and have been practicing just as hard as you so you can bet that they will be there with their game faces on.  Will you?  I have every confidence in you that you will.  If you all stick to the plan and communicate and work together, you will succeed.  I know you will!  If you break from the plan and try to do something different or your team's chemistry crumbles because some on the team decide not to cooperate or bend a little to work well with the rest, then it's going to be much harder for all of you.  Help each other out, pick someone up when they are down or in need, and talk openly to each other without negativity, and the convention will be a great experience for you that you will remember forever.