Thammasat Business School’s “Shelby & Co” team won the Business Case Competition at Guwahati, India. One of the four students who participated in this competition is Jeen Thanadol Sirichantakul. Jeen here shares his love for competitions and how it led him to join Thammasat University to pursue his business studies.
Why did you choose to study in BBA, TBS?
At first, I wanted to go abroad. I studied science at Triamudom school. I told my parents that I don’t want to study medicine as I do not have interest in it. I like the business and I am interested in BBA. Plus, I had also taken input from a senior who studies at BBA and had sought advice from my teacher. Therefore, I was well-aware of the advantages that the students from BBA Thammasat University. Moreover, I had heard also about the business cases.
Personally, I love the competition and the business case competition was also one of the factors why I decided to study here.
Did you start participating in the Business Case Competition after being a TBS student?
I started participating in a competition when I was in the first year. BBA Thammasat is a society that prepares you for competition with the professors supporting us at all steps. For example, when we won the competition in India which was around New Year, there were significantly higher transportation costs but TBS subsidized these expenses.
How much did the studying environment in BBA help you in business case competition?
Not every knowledge you learn can be immediately applied or used. However, in the real competition when we were working on the case, we encountered situations where we could use some of our professors’ teaching, especially the knowledge on the accounting systems.
We heard that you have always been interested in case studies, even before studying in BBA, so tell us something about the competitions you have participated in ?
The recent competition that I have won is the 19th Indonesia Capital Market Student Studies. Before that, I won the first prize from the Strategy Storm 2019 competition. I won 2nd runner up from P&G CEO Challenge Thailand 2019. I won the first prize from the Inter-university Case Competition and the 3rd Thailand Accounting Case Competition 2019. I got into the semi-finalist round from National HSBC Business Case Competition and got into the finalist round from Creative Shock International Business Case Competition 2018.
Do you intend to continue participating in competitions, or do you intend to take a break as the semesters get more hectic and rigorous?
I want to join a case competition until the first semester of my third year, and want to represent Thammasat in the best way. I would like to go for an exchange program in the second semester of the third year. If I go abroad, I want to stop participating in the competition because there will be too much work. In the fourth year, I want to start looking for a job and pass on my experience to my juniors because I also learned so many things from my seniors about case competition.
Is there anything you want to say to your juniors?
First, we have to evaluate ourselves. For me, I did not expect to get all A. I think I put half of my energy to study and the other half for case competitions. If you want to do good, you have to be satisfied with what you have before wanting more. Second, our life is like a chocolate box. It is like we do what we never knew before. In most cases, we don’t know if we will win or not or what we will get. It depends on us to see what we want from the chocolate box because if we hope to win, we will put too much pressure on ourselves, we will be afraid and might not want to do it. I want you to do it in order to know your limit and what follows will be your profit.