Stress and Success (part II)

After my whole presentation Friday morning, myself and three of my co-workers had a very important meeting with the CEO, David Clark, and a Supervising Lab Manager, Anna White, of Intermountain Health Care. We were to present a prototype for a new product we're working on and get any feedback and insight we could from them.

We'd been preparing for it for a week, well, I had been anyway. I was taking this meeting really seriously, probably more-so than anyone else. We decided who would present what part and we each came up with questions that needed to be answered. I made some business cards with our contact information on it, and printed out copies of the meeting's outline for each of us. I'd made the most up-to-date prototype and brought it and some older ones with me. I told everyone what to wear, because mechanical and chemical engineers can be pretty clueless about that (which they admitted to me a few days prior).

Around lunch time we all met up and took a BYU car over to the CEO's office. All of us were dressed professionally and we all looked pretty awesome. I called shotgun as we walked out to the car, and as we were driving, I couldn't help but feel tickled about how great of an experience all of that was. I felt like somebody important that belonged to an important company going to some big important executive meeting. Not only did I feel like that, but it was all true!

We made it over there and waited in a lobby outside of the conference room where the meeting would take place. All of us were giddy and excited, especially since we're only college students and things like this usually only happen to professionals.

The meeting itself went well. Our prototype and idea were received well. We got the feedback we needed to help us know in what direction we need to go. Both the CEO and lab manager agreed that if we can get our product finished with the appropriate standards met, they would immediately begin using it to replace their currently ineffective products.

Then Anna took us around part of their facility and discussed some additional problems they have there. She was so excited for our innovative ideas. She really wants our product to work out and is willing to help is as much as she is able to.

Everything went better than any of us expected! We all have a new energy about this project now. I think we all really want to see it exceed now more than ever. So now it's time to get to work!