That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
It’s the first day and we are all so excited to meet our competition and to get started. We have a briefing in the morning where we are told to sell as much jewellery as possible for a charity called Newlife. We are allowed off campus but not in the town walls so we decide to split into two teams. One team stayed on campus hassling everyone they passed whilst the other went door to door selling as much jewellery to as many interesting characters they could meet. The campus was pretty saturated and by the time the task was coming to an end I think everyone on campus had been approached and were fashioning their new pieces of jewellery. We were really happy with how we had sold but remained in a bundle of nerves as we were completely unaware of how good the other teams were and whether we had done enough.
We were invited to a champagne reception in the evening where we sat through a number of talks by Sayed, an old Apprentice contestant, and the mayor of York. However, the most important part of the evening for us was the results. When we found out that we had won the task and by more than £100 we just didn’t know what to do. We had previously been told that we gave the best performance in the interview and now this! Seeing as we were compared to Girls Aloud by Sayed I don’t think anyone was expecting this result and we couldn’t have been anymore proud of ourselves!
We were definitely on a high from the previous day but did not want to get complacent as we knew we still had everything to play for. Our second task was to provide a service for students. Because it was such a lovely day we were all definitely inclined to make the most of the weather and to sell ice creams, and we were not the only team with the idea. We were given a very short amount of time to think of an idea and to set it up so we went with it and told the society our idea. We then started selling and were doing well, making about £70 in the morning. Although we were slightly annoyed that it was turning into another selling task we were not doing too badly and so plodded on!
The ice cream was rapidly melting at this point and the talk that selling is not providing a service was rapidly turning into a heated discussion. The Entrepreneur Society called all team leaders to the Cetl-e and told them we had to give all our money we had previously made back in and start again with a 'proper' service with only £10 budget. We were upset at this point seeing as we hadn’t done too badly in the morning and was all wasted, and one of our team members had to leave us. Nonetheless, we knew we had to try and put it behind us and get desperate.
The afternoon turned into a mass cleaning session for most teams, with a lot of students benefitting from the desperation of the teams. We, however, decided to go off campus and offer our time to nearby residents. This involved us walking dogs, planting strawberries, picking up leaves and cleaning cars and we found out that some of the other teams had the same idea as we were walking down the road and saw Tim unloading a neighbour’s dishwasher! By the end of this task we were just happy that it was over but we did doubt that we had done enough. However, we were safe and all our hard work paid off. As an apology the society ordered pizzas for all the teams and we bonded in the evening with our stories of the revolting things we had to clean!
At this point six teams remained and we were so proud to have got this far. We were told that this was a 48 hour challenge where we had to create a drink, and then make an advert and poster marketing our product. We decided to go for an energy drink called Charge, and after a long brainstorming session decided on an advert including charging up and electricity. For the rest of the day we created our product, drawing a story board for our advert and decided that we wanted to get our poster over and done with so stayed up till 1 am trying to create it!
We were proud of our efforts until we found out team Calibre had pulled an ‘all nighter’. Still, we felt refreshed in the morning and ready to start shooting our advert. We had very strict time limits and had to do all our filming in an hour, including the travel period, and therefore we chose the closest location and organised everything prior to our given time.
After filming we were happy that we had the material we wanted but were extremely nervous about the editing as we knew this was the crucial part! Only two of the team members were allowed to be in the editing suite and I have to say it was one of the most stressful hour and a half's of my life! The trick was trying to get across to the editor exactly what we wanted and just sorting through all the material we had to find the good bits. When our hour and a half was over I felt extremely drained and wasn’t comfortable with how we had finished the advert. I also felt extremely sorry for our editor who probably thought through the whole session that he was about to see 2 19 year old girls burst into tears! THANKS MALCOLM!
We then had to do our presentation in the evening and this was by far one of the worst experiences of the whole week. We were the first group in and we came out feeling we had literally been ripped to pieces. The advert had been compared to a government advert about electricity and we all came out feeling that was the end of the road. We then had to go back to the Cetl-e and to be honest, none of us wanted to show our faces in there again. We felt very unsatisfied about how our advert had turned out and really did not think it had done our ideas justice! We then returned to find out that every other group felt the same as us. I think I must have heard every group say that they thought that was it for them.
The results were then finally read and I will never forget the moment we found out we were going through. Our whole team screamed and I think I must have squeezed my team mate's hand to pieces! We then went out for a meal in the evening with the panel, society and the four remaining teams which was very pleasant and a lot of funny stories regarding events that had happened up to then.
We were told previously that Friday and Saturday were the same challenge but we couldn’t say we were finalists yet so eagerly tried to second guess every move the society made. We found out that the last task was indeed an event and we had two hours to plan our event and produce a poster and presentation. We came up with the Mr. York idea, one that came out of talking about a beauty pageant, and we were all very excited about the idea but maybe it was just the thought of seeing hunks in trunks! We made a poster that we were very proud of and started calling around campus celebrities trying to get as many people involved as possible! We then had to pitch our idea and this was when team 2 Snakes, a Horse and a Fox were eliminated. This was very sad, as they had got this far, but we were delighted that we were finalists, and that we could go ahead with our event.
We then had to do a silent bid for the location we wanted. As three of our members are from Derwent we were all set on having that as our venue but we didn’t realise just how crucial this bid was. It ended up with us bidding a whopping 72 people for Derwent, meaning we had to make it all up in raffle ticket sales where for every two tickets sold it would count as one person. We spent the rest of the afternoon putting up flyers, confirming acts and selling raffle tickets like crazy!
Saturday morning we literally went raffle crazy. A couple of our members organised the event and set up meetings with show compere etc, and the other two members must have ended up selling a raffle ticket to everyone in York! I went into town to collect a few food items that places such as Fudge Kitchens and the York sweet shop had kindly donated to us and then we spent the rest of our time setting up and making the Mr. York crown!
We are so proud of our event, and everyone we have spoken to said it was definitely the most entertaining one, and we all agreed that if we weren’t in the competition we would have attended and thoroughly enjoyed the night! Thanks to all the Mr. York contestants - you made our night with the dancing, chat up lines and most definitely the best body parts! The only hiccup on that night was the raffle tickets: we ended up receiving a punishment as we were late handing in our money but we believe this was due to the fact of the amount we sold. However, it was something we should have organised previously. By the time the results came my stomach was in knots. I was so proud of our event and really, have never seen Derwent that buzzing.
However, I am not going to deny how important winning was to us. We all agreed that our event went well, but we knew our bid was the part that let us down. We want to say well done to Mbezel and Calibre, they were amazing contestants, and just how good they were made the competition all the more exciting and challenging.
When we found out we hadn’t won I was devastated seeing as we were at a minus 72 disadvantage and then only lost by 14 people. It was sickening, but the whole experience has been great. I will never forget it, and we have all agreed that this may not be the last time you see Vivacity. We are four determined women with the aim of winning and if it takes another year to reach it, well, that is something we will have to live with! I’m so proud of my team and had such a fun time with them! Thanks to our great competitors and the York Entrepreneur Society, you created a superb event and I hope you enjoyed us as a team as much as we enjoyed being a team!
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