Sophomore Shreya Sharma recently placed second overall nationally in the Final Round of the Virtual Business Challenge for FBLA. She is very appreciative of her advisor’s support, Mrs. Jackson, for always rooting for her and allowing her to stay on top of whatever tasks she has to complete.

Sharma spent most of her spring break working on her virtual simulation, where you simulate a business and have to account for your profit based on how much you sell with your asset and liability costs, such as the machines you own and how much rent you pay for your store. Before a certain timeframe, you try to get a greater amount of profit.

“It was a jeans company, so I named it Apple Bottom Jeans Company,” Sharma explains.

The most difficult challenge for Shreya was finding a balance between focusing on the simulation and more conceptual skills she developed over time. In this challenge, you are allowed to start the simulation over multiple times. In her initial attempts, she states that she wished she would have applied organization skills sooner.

Sharma tracked her monthly and yearly profit, the number of jeans being produced, and other numerical values in the forms of graphs, tables and other data sets. When dealing with unexpected mortgage or data changes, she noticed that after a low amount of profit or low amount of production occurred, it would drastically increase the next week in terms of trends.

“I think in your life, generally, if you have a low or if you’re going through a hard time, I think you could definitely just work on yourself and be better and you’ll eventually reach the high that you want.” Sharma says.

After placing, she first told her older brother who was a previous FBLA member who knew much of topics such as Personal Finance, and then she told her parents who were also very excited for her.

Sharma wants to major in engineering, and currently takes AP Computer Science Applications and took AP Computer Science Principles in her Freshman year.

Ultimately, her goal is to give back to the resources that have helped her. “I want to give back to my school, and I think this is, like, the perfect way to do that.” Sharma smiles.