Mu Alpha Theta Convention

I was selected, along with about thirty other MSMS students, to attend Mississippi's State Mu Alpha Theta Convention. This is my first year in Mu Alpha Theta, and I didn't even know that State Convention existed before then. I was pretty excited.

I was signed up to do the Trigonometry test, the Relay competition, and Intermediate level ciphering. We left school around 11:45am on Sunday, April 13, 2014, to travel to Pearl, where the competition was held.

My first event was the Trigonometry subject area test. I feel like the test went extremely well, and I checked my work, too. However, I was one of the last to turn in my test, so if there was a tie, I definitely lost it.

Next was Intermediate Ciphering. I thought the entire packet of problems was pretty awful. However, everyone else seemed to agree with that sentiment.

I later learned that I had made the Intermediate Ciphering team for finals. This only means that I beat half of the eight total MSMS students in that event to make the top four for our school, but it's still something.

I was also put on the Interschool team, which had a total of around 20 people. 

Today is the 2nd day of convention and my first event was Interschool. It was terrible. I really have no idea how well we did overall, but personally, I spent the entire time on one problem and didn't have a clue what was going on.

My next event was Relay. I feel like my questions were pretty simple, and my part should have gone well. There was a glitch with how the problems were printed, but after the first question, it was dealt with.

My last event was Intermediate Ciphering Finals. I actually felt that it was better than the first round of ciphering. We got to work as a team, which was helpful. We definitely missed a few, and some took two minutes. However a good many were correct. I don't know how it went overall yet; that depends on other teams' performances as well.

UPDATE: The entire team's performance was awesome! Overall, MSMS won the entire convention. I cannot keep track of all the awards, but my team got 2nd in Intermediate Ciphering, 2nd in Relay, and 5th in Interschool. I also placed 1st in Trigonometry written test. One of our students was also elected state Mu Alpha Theta President.  Overall, the convention was a pretty good experience.

Are you ready?

Are you ready? Venture Crew 70 is heading to the Summit-Bechtel Scout Reserve this summer. Our arrival date is July 13th. Our program is the river, so there ought to be a lot of time on the water. We still have a lot of work to do, but we're looking forward to it.

Course Selection Time

It's that time of year - time to select courses for my last year of high school. It's stressful, because I know this is my last year to take classes before college, and there are so many classes to take. Basically, I want to take all the classes.

There are a lot of options. For math, I want to continue taking more calculus, as well as taking statistics. For biology, I definitely want to take Human Infectious Diseases, as well as Ecology. Plant Physiology and Animal Physiology are also options. For chemistry, there is Biochemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Analytical Chemistry. I don't know how much physics I will take, but my options include AP Physics C, or Thermodynamics and Modern Physics. There are also electives I want to take - like Number Sense, a course geared towards preparing for math competitions.  I don't know yet what I'm going to choose, but it's going to be a hard choice.

Of course senior year is going to involve more than just coursework. I know that college applications are purportedly a time-sucking vampire. I'm also interested  in doing research. Of course I want to keep up with my extracurricular activities as well - Venture Crew, Mu Alpha Theta, Science Bowl, and probably others. Eventually it will all work out - for now I just have to decide what I want most.