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.

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.