My journey for the selection of members of the Bangladesh Team in the International Economics Olympiad 2020 (IEO 2020) by Bangladesh Economics Olympiad (BDEO) started on July 17 of this year. I had found about this competition from a Facebook event and as I was always passionate about economics, I went for it.

The first preliminary selection was an MCQ round in which around 1000 passionate students from all over Bangladesh took part. Despite my not-that-robust preparation, I was selected. From the preliminary round, selected candidates went on to the theory round. This was followed by viva exam where a board of economic professionals interviewed the candidates for the National Camp selection, which was going to be a week-long affair. All of this took place virtually.

After the National Camp started, I started to realise that things were getting serious quite fast and that I had a chance to be selected. In the Camp, classes and evaluations were taken by a variety of professionals and academicians, ranging from teachers to investment bankers, to give us lectures and share knowledge on the various components of economics and their applications in the real world. The aim was to make sure that the selected members could perform well in all aspects of economics and associated subjects. The camp ended with an evaluation test, after which they announced the participants representing Team Bangladesh. To my amazement, I was selected. I felt honoured having been given this opportunity to participate in such a global forum. The selection rounds which was almost two months long made us feel prepared for the upcoming competition.

I was joined by Syed Nazif Ishrak from Sunnydale School and Fariha Zaman Promi, Esfar Jawad and Darpan Barua, from SFX Green Herald School. Md Al-Amin Parvez, lecturer at the Dhaka School of Economics and Akhtar Ahmed, Chairman of Capstone School, who was also our coach, led our team. I was the youngest in the team but the extensive guidance provided by my team and coaches made up for that.

The final international event which was supposed to take place in Kazakhstan instead was held virtually due to the pandemic. We started our preparation as a team just weeks before the event, but thanks to the help from our coaches and mentors, we were adequately prepared. The IEO comprised of three rounds, held from September 7-13, 2020. We completed all our rounds in Capstone School Dhaka. The first round was financial literacy, which was a simulation game in creating personal financial plans to deal with stock markets, bonds, real estate along with real-time events as the game progressed. In this game, whoever scored the highest points would win. We came 5th on the country leaderboard with Fariha Zaman achieving 7th position in the individual leaderboard. The next round was the economic round where we had to answer questions related to economics, business, finance and game theory. It was one of the hardest papers I ever did, but we passed.

The last round and the round where we shined was the business case round. This relied on teamwork. Our case was that we were a consulting group, and we had to provide a price for a Covid-19 vaccine. It was a tremendous ordeal but one in which our experienced members, Esfar and Darpan took leadership role to make sure that our presentation was flawless. We worked the entire day and night coming up with a suitable presentation. I worked in marketing and logistics trying to create a formula and presented the slides on price strategy, For the first round of the business case presentation, they placed us in the South Asian group. The winner of this round would proceed to the final. Because of our performances, we moved onto the last round.

The last round was genuinely stressful and nerve-wracking. Our presentation was grilled and questioned at every step by top industry professionals and economists around the world, yet we persevered and answered all their questions with Nazif acting as our star.

On the last day of the Olympiad, the award ceremony took place. We weren't very confident as they calculated the scores from the previous three rounds. To my surprise, we ended up winning four individual bronze medals and our team was placed third for Business Case Presentation. I was awarded the bronze for individual performance. The feeling of beating countries such as the US, Russia, and China where they had trained for an entire year was tremendous and was only possible because the teamwork of the Bangladesh Team which was second to none.

While we missed out going to Kazakhstan because of the pandemic, the entire BDEO made sure that there were no stones left unturned in our journey to final round. Tahsinul Islam, organizing secretary and Rafid Abrar, secretary of the executive committee of BDEO, helped us along the entire way, making sure that everything was in control so that the Olympiad was our only concern. Coaches such as Akhtar Sir and Al Amin Sir stayed awake night after night to make sure we were fully prepared. We were one of the few teams that had an actual venue for the Olympiad - the Capstone School. The entire Capstone staff made sure that we could participate in the Olympiad comfortably.

So, the entire reason for such results is teamwork and the help of so many. It is only a start on a long journey but one which we began successfully. I was lucky enough to work with some of the most talented teammates I could ever dream to have. Although I am in no position to give advice, I strongly feel that young talents who are passionate about economics should not shy away from participating in such competition.

The writer is a student of class 11 from Sunbeams School, Dhaka.