A Goodbye to MSMS

Well, I graduate on Saturday. Mostly, I'm feeling pretty sad about it. I'm leaving behind a whole two years of my life and all the people who were a part of that. I just don't know if college can live up to this.

MSMS and Scouts (both Venturing and Girl Scouting) have been the main influences on my life for the last two years, so college, where these things will not be ever-present, is going to be really strange.

It's amazing to me how I will have friends scattered all over the world so soon. Many of my classmates stay in state, saving money and helping to fulfill the MSMS mission of enriching the state in a more immediate way. I know people going to schools like Yale, Harvard, Cornell, MIT, UC Berkeley, Amherst College, and other schools all over the states. I also have friends who have chosen unique educational opportunities like Deep Springs College or the Minerva Project. A few students even go to college in other countries as well. It's scary and wonderful how we will be scattered. We will all be very separated, but I will also know people all over the place.

I plan to attend Carleton College in the fall, and I am considering a biology major, but won't have to declare my major until sophomore year. I will also work this summer at Philmont Scout Ranch.

To future MSMS students, all I can really offer is my best wishes and a few bits of advice you didn't ask for. In no particular order:

1. Work hard.

2. Take advantage of the opportunities you are offered.

3. Recognize when you need help, and ask for it.

4. Don't do anything stupid.

5. Don't forget to have fun and enjoy every moment, because you don't get any of them back.

I know a lot of people have helped me to reach where I am now: teachers, mentors, Scout leaders, friends, parents, family, and so on, so thank you to all of them. I couldn't have done it without you.

Hendrix Application

Well, I submitted my Hendrix application last night, so that's one more college down. Only three more college applications left. That just leaves honors college apps and scholarship apps...

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.

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.

State Science Olympiad Competition, Part IV

As we filed out, we learned that there had been a mistake. The Science Olympiad administrators said that we had not participated in the Fermi Questions event.

Those two team members had turned in a test, properly labeled. After a long, tense wait, the test was found between two pieces of scratch paper and scored.

We had actually scored third in that event, which, when everything was corrected, subtracted fifteen points from our score, and won us first place (lowest score wins).

Personally, I feel pretty terrible for Oxford having won and then being told it was a mistake. It makes it a lot harder for me to feel good about winning, even though it was not our team's fault that the mixup happened.

However, once everything was sorted out, we switched trophies with Oxford and claimed first place. We will be going to Science Olympiad Nationals in Florida, which is exciting.

EDIT: We took 6th Place for Disease Detectives and 5th Place for Water Quality.

State Science Olympiad Competition, Part III

At the awards ceremony, everyone was very anxious after the day's events. Personally, I wasn't expecting to win after so many events that had not gone as well as expected.

After a lot of waiting, the awards ceremony was finally underway. I got first for A&P, and 2nd for Chem Lab. I was pretty surprised about A&P. Overall, MSMS had a lot of medals, but we also heard Oxford and Park Lane called up a lot as well. We were pretty certain that we had not done well enough to beat Oxford.

Finally, they announced the overall winners. Park Lane won third. We won second. Oxford won first. As we walked up to get our picture taken, we tried to reconcile ourselves to our failure, although it hurt. I know I hated to have failed my team, although I could stop studying now that the competition was over, which would be a relief.

State Science Olympiad Competition, Part II

My first event was Water Quality at 8:30. It was awful, but participating prevented us from placing last.

Disease Detectives was next, at 12. The test seemed rather simple. We thought it went pretty well, although we didn't enjoy the free response format.

Chem Lab was next. It went pretty smoothly...once we realized that we had a pH meter available. We were a little confused about how to do it before we realized that.

My last event was one of the last two events of the day: A&P. The test was extremely difficult. It was one hundred questions long, but we still finished with plenty of time to spare. The proctor said that it was harder than the test at nationals. We hoped everyone else had felt as awful about the test as we had, but when we saw people leaving they claimed it was great. That didn't make us feel any better about it.

Most of the team had already packed the bus, and were waiting at the awards ceremony, so we headed that way.

State Science Olympiad Competition, Part I

Friday, March 28, was the state Science Olympiad competition, held at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

We left on Thursday around 5. All our supplies and stuff had to be loaded into a bus - printer, study materials, pre-built constructions, safety equipment, tools, and so on. It was a very long ride to Hattiesburg and our hotel where we spent the night.

Everyone, well...mostly everyone, was busy that night. Last minute cramming, cheat sheet construction, putting the finishing touches on build events. Most of us had a lot to do and didn't get much sleep- except for the one person with all his events already built and ready to go.

Most people went to sleep by two. A few were asleep earlier, and some unfortunates had an hour-long nap before it was time to go to the competition that morning.

The weather was awful. After carrying our equipment through the pouring rain, we finally found a good location to set up our base. Those with build events rushed to get their contraptions to impound. At 8:30, the events would begin.

MSMS Math Tournament

MSMS hosts a math tournament annually. Mu Alpha Theta runs it and sets it all up, but every student is assigned a task. I was assigned to be a committee head for the Algebra I/Geometry written test and ciphering competition.

Most students are either runners or graders. Runners collect answers from the ciphering competition and graders score and tally correct answers. As a committee head, my job is to check students in in the morning, get scores and forms to the Tally Room, and generally sort scores, check answers, take care of problems, and do whatever is required. I also will be staying at the Convention Center until at least 3, while most students will return before lunch.

The experience of working the competition has actually been sort of fun. It's hectic, and is an amazing example of ordered chaos. All sorts of things went wrong, but problems were dealt with, and the event still went off very well overall.
We also get the day off class, which is a nice bonus. This wouldn't be nearly as fun if I knew that I was going to return to school having missed four classes, many of which are labs. I also enjoyed learning about the planning that goes on behind hosting any sort of competition.

Science Olympiad North Regionals

This Saturday was regionals for Science Olympiad at Mississippi State University. I've never done Science Olympiad before, and I didn't know what it was going to be like at all. I only had one event at regionals, although I have three events for state.
I took the A&P test for MSMS, along with my partner. We scored 2nd place. One of Oxford's teams placed 3rd and one of Oxford's teams placed 1st. We understood that only the nervous and integumentary systems would be on the test, but we found out that immune was also on the test. I suppose that was just what we got for not studying ahead for state. Luckily, I knew some of the immune system answers. However, there were others that I could not remember for when I took AP Biology, which was frustrating.
I have a lot of studying to do before state - the immune system, more about the nervous and integumentary systems, chem lab, and water quality. However, I feel like the whole team did really well at regionals. Regionals forces us to prepare for state before the last minute. Our build events were all pretty spectacular.
Collectively, our team placed 1st in the competition. There were six or seven other high schools present, and Oxford's two teams took 2nd and 3rd. Oxford will be upset about the loss, and ready to win at state, which is why we cannot rest on our laurels yet.

University of Alabama Physics Competiton

Last Tuesday, I attended the physics competition at the University of Alabama. The first part of the competition was the individual written test. I was surprised that I had learned how to do many of the problems (I have not yet completed my first year of physics). However, it was rather frustrating that I had forgotten many of the equations to complete the problems; I'm used to an equation sheet with my physics tests. The test was very heavy on mechanics, and didn't include much of what we've learned in waves, although there was some work with circuits, which we have not covered yet. One of our students placed ninth out of all the students present in the individual test, the only one of our students to place.
The second part of the competition was a team competition. My team did decently well. MSMS is the only school in our division, so there were seven teams of MSMS students competing against each other. Normally, the AL School for Math and Science is in our division as well, but due to the rescheduling and short notice, they didn't make it this year. MSMS-6 took 1st place. MSMS-1 took 2nd place. And MSMS-2, my team, took 3rd place.
After the competition portion of the day, there are physics demos and so on to interest smart physics students in coming to University of Alabama to study physics. Unfortunately, I have little understanding of what people actually do in current physics, so much of the information about the search for neutrinos and dark matter was completely lost on me. The other presentation was rather disappointing - they were demonstrating using the same motion sensing equipment and DataStudio software that we routinely use in class. I suppose they had no way to know that we were already familiar with that system, but we were not the only ones who frequently used that type of equipment for physics labs.
The University of Alabama does have a pretty campus, and they're known for giving out generous merit aid. However, I don't know much about them. In the end, it was a good day and a fun trip. I missed a Tuesday, which is four classes, but I don't mind that much.

Traveling Science Carnival

Last Thursday, I participated in MSMS's Traveling Science Carnival. We went to Bettye Mae Jack Middle School in Morton, Mississippi.

I worked the Color presentation for Physics. First, we used diffraction glasses to teach the children about breaking white light into the entire spectrum of light. The kids got to keep the glasses, so they loved that. Then, we used tops to demonstrate the mixing of colors. Finally, we did a retinal fatigue exercise.

Our audiences were groups of second, third, and fifth graders. We've never done the presentations for children as old as fifth graders before, so it was a different experience. Some of the children asked really good questions - one boy asked about how different colors were made.

Overall, the day was absolutely exhausting. I could hardly speak by the end of it.

The school plans to continue the program annually, visiting a different school each time. Personally, I think it's a really cool way to reach out to other schools, and to teach kids about science.

Mississippi College Math and Science Tournament

January and February always seem to be busy months for academic competitions and extracurriculars. Thursday was the Mississippi College Mathematics and Science Tournament. The competition is actually two days: Thursday and Friday, but we chose to attend on Thursday. Eleven seniors and juniors from MSMS competed.
The morning portion of the competition consists of two written tests, in some combination of Math, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics (each student chooses which tests they would like to take). I took Math and Biology. Math was 40 questions in 45 minutes. It was all material I had learned before, but I was a lot weaker in geometry than I should have been. I last took geometry in the ninth grade, and although the problems were familiar, I had forgotten some of the theorems and postulates that would have been good to know. After a short break, the Biology test was 100 questions in 45 minutes. I thought this would be a struggle to finish in time, but I actually finished with more extra time than I had for the Math test. The questions were very straightforward.
After lunch, there was the Quiz Bowl style competition. Although it is called a "Quiz Bowl" competition, it is actually quite different from anything else I have ever done. I played on the team, along with three of my cohorts. Many teams would play at once, and the games were 40 questions long. Questions were math and science focused, and displayed on a projector screen. Captains had to raise their hand, with their answer written on a folded piece of paper in their hand. Checkers for each team verified if answers were correct, and spotters watched which teams raised their hands first. Points were received for first, second, and third fastest correct answers.
After this, there was the awards ceremony. Disappointingly, the computer system had issues, and individual placements were not announced. For the school wide competition, we do not compete, because MSMS students represent schools from all over the state. However, we did win 2nd place in the Quiz Bowl portion of the competition: Oxford took 1st place, and we beat Jackson Prep for 3rd place. We later looked up our placement for the individual scores. MSMS had four scores in the top 1%, one in the top 3%, and several in the top 10% and top 20%.
It made me miss my quiz bowl team - it was like something I would have done with them. I had thought I would get to see them there, but my home school chose to attend the competition on Friday instead, so that didn't happen, which was a bit disappointing. However, I enjoyed the competition, and the day off of school.

Science Bowl, Part II

We played our own A team. And we won. We weren't expecting it. We didn't really want it - we had enjoyed proving ourselves against them at practice, but knocking them out of the competition was not something we wanted or expected. We were all very upset after that game, but we had to move on to the next round.
We played Oxford for this game. We knew that after we had beaten our own A team, we had to win the rest of the competition. It was the least that we could do. We didn't. The match was very close. 36-26, in Oxford's favor. Ten points difference - less than one tossup and bonus between us. There were a thousand different ways the match could have gone in our favor - any one of us slightly faster on a question, or a lucky guess, or whether Oxford got the bonus correct on the final question - the match hung on the edge, and I suppose we were just on the wrong side of that edge.
After that match, Oxford beat Walnut for the first place. So technically, we took third/fourth place (more like third in my book). One of our A team players and one of our B team players placed for most individual points scored. Perhaps things would have been very different if we had drawn a different bracket. This was the second time in twenty-six years that MSMS did not send a team to the national competition.
We will come back next year, and next year we will be smarter, faster, and better. We have a score to settle, and I know that I will do everything I can to fix that.

Science Bowl, Part I

One of the advantages of going to Mississippi's math and science high school is that there are a lot more extracurricular activities available than what was previously available to me. One of these is science bowl.
I remember when I first came to the interest meeting for science bowl, and even the first several practices. The room was always crowded. I was even quieter than normal during those first few uncomfortable weeks of school. Some of those days, I hardly had a chance to sit down at a buzzer, much less get a question correct. The questions were far harder than anything I had ever tried before - they were much more complex than the science questions asked in quiz bowl.
I was discouraged, and weekly sessions of losing had me ready to quit. I decided to at least stay until I was cut from the team. If nothing else, it was practice for quiz bowl. I was used to quiz bowl practice four days a week, and just once weekly still seems like very little to me.
I really liked the way that science bowl was run. The sponsor kept track of points - who was scoring, and in what subject areas. As the year progressed, players were cut, until the final teams were chosen. A similar program for a quiz bowl team could clear up a lot of confusion that I know was present in my previous team about who was playing for competitions, why, and if feelings would be hurt. With the team run this way, I couldn't hurt anything by coming to practice while practices were open.
I was surprised when I made the first cut. Twenty-one players were kept and sorted into four teams. I've always had a very poor sense of how well I am doing at something as stressful as a competition of this sort without being able to see any numbers or scores. I've frequently played quiz bowl competitions where scores are not visible, and I am under the impression that we are losing, while we have actually beaten the opposing team by a wide margin.
I was captain for my team of five. We only played three games - one against each of the other teams. We lost the first two games, and finally won the last one. After that, I was certain that I would not be making it any farther. However, when the players were cut again, I had made the B team as co-captain. I would be playing at regionals.
Practices were soul-crushing. The A team won, every time, frequently quadrupling our score. (I wonder if that's why they were the A team.) As the regional competition loomed, we increased practices to twice a week, and then daily during the week leading up to competition. We beat the A team a mere two out of the many matches we played against each other.
The competition finally approached. Matches did not begin until 12:30, and this left far too much time for thought. I could not pay attention during my classes that morning. The whole team was stressed - especially before matches and during the frequent breaks. During the qualifying rounds, both of our teams won all three matches and progressed to the single elimination bracket.
Next, we had to draw letters for our places in the bracket. The A team captain drew first: E. I drew later: F. We were playing our own team. Only one of us would make it past the next round - we knew it would be the A team, and that then they would win the rest of the competition. We had joked all day about what would happen if we played each other. We had laughed because we hoped it wouldn't happen - or at least not until the finals.