One hundred and sixty-five teams, seven days and one question: “Can you make it?”ag

This question will be the motivation for team adrenILLINI agas they make their way around Europe for the next seven days competing in the Red Bull Can You Make It? challenge.

Alison Mo and Nirali Nahar, both seniors, and Nina Rajcevic, a junior, are the three University business students comprising adrenILLINI.ag

adrenILLINI arrived in Europe Monday and will embark upon their journey starting Tuesday at noon.ag

The students will have to give up their cash, credit cards and phones for a week, all in exchange for 24 cans of Red Bull.ag

While Red Bull is commonly used as an energy drink, these cans of Red Bull will serve a different purpose. They will be used as currency.ag

For the 165 teams coming from all over the world, the cans of Red Bull as currency will be used for food, transportation, housing and anything else they may need along the way.ag

“Red Bull is obviously not worth that much in monetary value,” Nahar said. “The biggest thing is to sell our story and explain why we are doing what we are doing.”

Every day, the teams must check in at major cities that serve as “checkpoints,” where they are given 24 more cans of Red Bull each time.

The teams are only told their start point and end point. The cities they stop at in between are completely up to them.

“There’s only so much we can prepare for this, because there’s a huge element of unexpectedness involved,” Rajcevic said. “We know we are starting in Prague and ending in Paris, but everything in between is to be determined.”

Since the whole trip will be unplanned and unpredictable, adrenILLINI is most excited to live in the moment and be spontaneous, which is something they are not really used to, they said.

“We are all super organized and big planners, I mean, we all live out of our Google planners so I’m excited to see how this plays out,” Nahar said.

Before adrenILLINI was even given the opportunity to go to Europe, they had to successfully earn the most likes on a minute-long video they created to prove they “can make it.”ag

“We wanted to get out the message that we are super adventurous, we are super excited about this challenge, and we can make it,” Nahar said.

The video shows adrenILLINI decked out in Illini gear and drinking Red Bull with their friends as they reminisce on pictures of them studying abroad in Europe last year.ag

“We wanted to show there was support on our side, and we have definitely felt that through U of I,” Mo said. “We also wanted to showcase that we can inspire others to live life to the fullest.”

adrenILLINI pulled two all-nighters to make sure the video was absolutely perfect before releasing it, they said.

The next step was to market themselves so they could get as many likes on their video so they would be chosen to go to Europe. To do this, adrenILLINI posted their link to large Facebook groups,ag individually messaged people on Facebookag, went to sorority dinner announcements and talked to as many people as possible to get them to believe in their team and vote for them.

“The marketing was kind of difficult because there were twelve teams from U of I that were also trying to get likes from the same groups of people,” Nahar said.

However, all adrenILLINI’s hard work in marketing paid off. They were the only one of 12 teams from the University selected to go to Europe, making them the only team from the state of Illinois. Eighteen total teams from the United States will be participating in the challenge starting Tuesday.ag

“We want to be competitive about this but enjoy everything that comes our way too. We can make it, we can totally make it,” Nahar said. “Let’s do this thing.”

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