No one told me when I signed up to be a marketing major that there would be a group project in almost every marketing class I took. I do love my major, and that might have scared me away if I did have that information, but the group projects definitely have been one of the biggest challenges of my college career. The projects are interesting because I get to work on things from a subject I love, but coordinating the schedules of 4-7 college students can be nearly impossible. It is rare to find a UCF student that gets to dedicate all of their time to school. Fortunately, this semester I was blessed with having some of my closest friends in all of my marketing classes.

Some would say that it usually doesn’t work to have a group full of friends. However, I’ve become close to these people through extracurricular activities and I enjoy being around them because they have a similar level of intellect and maturity. We’ve worked extremely well together. There’s been weeks like this one where the pressure is on because we have a marketing plan worth 15% of our grade due in one class on Tuesday, large events in our organizations on Wednesday and Thursday, and our final presentation of our digital marketing efforts for a make believe company to a panel of “sharks” on Thursday. But with these girls, I’ve been able to not only work hard, but play hard on our occasional mental health break. Plus, we should have one awesome dinner after class tonight whether it is sad or celebratory.

Shout out to these amazing ladies for the great work we’ve done this week:

Veronica Kay: Veronica is in 4/5 of my classes this semester. She’s commuting about an hour each way to both class and her job at the university’s career services office but still doing a great in everything she does. She’s one of the few people I can trust to work on a project after me because her grammar is impeccable. She’s been doing great work tweeting for our fake business, producing advertisements in our simulation, and more. Just don’t laugh at her jokes, it encourages her.

Alexandra Scipione: This girl is doing everything I do (same classes, internship on the same days, club president, etc) PLUS a paying job on the weekends. She knows how to put out great work whether it is reviewing Google Analytics or simulated finances. At the same time, I can always count on Alex to keep things light by sharing funny things she finds online with us. I’m so proud of her getting her dream internship for this spring!

Tashia Cruz: She’s in two out of three of my group projects this semester. Tashia has extreme attention to detail. Usually I would say that I do, but I have to remind Tashia to relax sometimes. She’s been great at making decisions about our simulated sales force and teaching herself how to make the best possible website for our fake business. She’s definitely been a great asset to our projects while being a pleasant person to spend time with.

Arielle Morten: Full time student, employee, organization leader, and a mom? This girl can do it all! Arielle makes herself incredibly available for someone with so much on her plate and always impresses me with the quality of her work. And her patience when we would go on tangents about our other projects.

Sol Cerrada: Sol has been such a sweet person and on top of everything. This girl was most of the social media presence for our entire fake company, finding and sharing tons of great content mostly by herself. The posts were worded beautifully, and I’d always be amazed to look up and see that was one of our posts rather than a news outlet I’m following.