The winter break is a great time to relax and see friends and family, but it’s also a valuable opportunity to accelerate job and internship searches. It is the first time in months (and for many, years) that three weeks are available for whatever you need to do. Many students use the time to fix resumes, reach out to industry contacts or just create a plan for the upcoming internship hunt. This year, first year student Dalia Ismail took it one step further and began getting experience over the break. I’ll let her tell the rest…

Slopestyle Course
As I rode the Colorado Mountain Express (CME) into sunny Breckenridge, CO, I knew it was going to be an exciting weekend of events! I was going to get to witness some of the best shredding around since I had the lucky opportunity to work for Alli Sports during their big Winter Dew Tour event. It is numero uno of the Tour’s three stops and the first chance for each skier and snowboarder to earn points towards becoming the Dew Tour champion.
As the second Warsaw student ever to get involved in action sports, I took advice from my predecessor Tom Czarnowski, and made myself as accessible as possible throughout the event. I was initially only responsible for handling the Action Zone Pass holders - a $100 ticket that got fans special viewing areas for the competitions, an exclusive behind the scenes tour of the courses (which I led), athlete meet and greets, discounts, a bag of swag, free hot chocolate, and of course all the Mountain Dew anyone can drink - but on day one, I was already helping out with responsibilities outside my role.
Athlete registration this year had a huge turnout which is great for the sport, but left the organizers without enough volunteers. I spent the majority of my first day checking in the athletes, collecting payments for the open qualifiers, and registering each athlete with a coordinating bib number. Then as soon as registration closed at 4pm, I went out with my AZ team to the festival village outside to set up our tent. We worked until about 8pm at night on the cold mountain with only one head lamp to shine any light!

Behind the scenes action
The next day we were back up on the mountain at 7:45am to open up shop and get ready for the visitors and pass holders to pour in! Each day consisted of manning the tent, taking one or two runs through the course to scope out our behind the scenes tour route, and hiking up the mountain a few hundred feet to make sure only our pass holders had access to the AZ area.
Yes, that means little ol’ Dalia was acting as security! Although my size wasn’t intimidating, my credentials and NYC attitude got the job done!
So, other than being confused for a pro because of the oversized Dew Tour sweatshirt, and the early mornings and cold late nights with very little food, this was one of the best experiences of my life and a great start into my new career path! Coming from an MBA program like Warsaw, I was more than able to juggle many responsibilities and perform more efficiently than the average volunteer. The people at Alli took notice too as they asked me to come back for the last two stops (in Utah and Vermont) and to possibly be the Portland representative for the summer tour!
It’s nice to know that just a little effort can put the Warsaw name on the map in the Action Sports industry – where more MBA’s are definitely needed.