At the end of April, business teacher Bruce Burwitz took five of his finance students, Rowan Maynard, Vaughn Clark, Anthony Maini, Talon Howe and Jeremy McDonald to San Diego to compete in the LifeSmarts competition. According to the LifeSmarts website, “LifeSmarts provides real-world education for students who learn about core consumer topics and develop critical thinking skills.”
LifeSmarts is a national competition that different schools compete in. This year there were 48 teams competing and each team got assigned a sister school to bond with while at the competition.
“Our sister team was from Minnesota,” Burwitz said. “So our team was four guys and it turned out their team was four girls but they were very nice. And it was the first time their coach had ever sponsored a team that went there so it was kind of a new thing. So we were able to kind of show them the ropes.”
During the competition teams are supposed to answer questions about five different main topics: environmental, health and safety, finance, technology and consumer rights. Every team plays in at least seven rounds. Each round each team gets four players and must hit a buzzer to answer questions.
“We were kind of middle of the pack at 26 or something like that. We didn’t win it obviously, but they competed well and it was a good experience, competing against those other teams.”
Burwitz explained that this is not the first time he has gone to the competition. He has gone 11 times before and even won a state championship.
The team also got time to go sightseeing and spend some time in San Diego.
“We went to a baseball game while we were out there with the Padres. We went to the San Diego Zoo, which is the best zoo in the United States, it’s outstanding. We went out to the beach, we went to Old Town and a Mexican restaurant there and saw the original Old San Diego which is very historic. So we did a lot of fun activities as well as competed.”
Burwitz said they had a lot of fun but one memory did stick out in particular.
“My favorite [memory] was when we got to the ballgame. You know, it’s like 80,000 fans at these Padres games. So we’re gonna pick a meeting place in case we get separated because there’s a lot of people here and like, two minutes into entering the arena we already lost like half the group.”
Overall Burwitz and his group had a lot of fun on the trip. Burwitz said it was a good experience even if they didn’t win. They didn’t only compete but also bonded within their own group and also with other teams and kids there.
