So, I'm about to go to sleep but I thought, hell, it's been awhile since I've written a post and don't really have anything else to do.
It's actually been a pretty eventful month so far (March was my super busy work-work-work month, so now that it's almost finally over, I can relax). The main things that have happened are the science fair, mock trial, science alliance/club stuff, and field trips. I'll go over them super quick and probably make another post expanding on them later.
Science fair was surprisingly very successful. On the set-up day, I ended up covering my board in torn up garbage bags and taping it together, and walking through the pouring rain to get to the fairgrounds. On the way there, I met an old Asian man dragging some soaked luggage, and he asked for directions. Weird thing was, he was trying to go to an area super far away from where he was, so I offered to walk with him there, but he refused. After I got rid of my board, I tried finding him again but couldn't.
As for the actual science fair presentations, the judges were really nice (one Indian judge actually came back after judging and said he'll be looking forward to my work in the future), and I got into the second round. For some reason, I didn't really get that many questions about the actual processes surrounding my project– unlike last year– but general consensus from judges and students was that it's a very interesting concept and is "genuine" because I did it all at home without anyone's help (a lot of the projects that got into the second round or won big prizes were done in research labs).
I ended up getting first place in my category ($100 prize) and the Chevron scholarship award for $600. Honestly, I don't know how, but I'll take it. Oh, and I saw this girl I met last year again, which was nice (she won runner up again, which is no surprise since she's been winning science fairs since middle school apparently).
Mock trial, on the other hand, was less successful, but still fun. We left to drive to Sacramento on a school day, got food (grilled cheese with bacon, mozzarella sticks, and fries, oh my), signed in, and hung out in the hotel room for a while. We had our workshops, where we learned about the inverted triangle and news article writing, and then I ended up walking around downtown Sacramento at night with the people from my team. It was a bit ghetto, but we got to see the capitol building and accidentally went to Old Sacramento (which was nice).
Competition day was alright– essentially we went in, took notes, went to Starbucks (a lot of homeless people shoot up in Starbucks bathrooms in Sacramento), wrote articles, and went home. I didn't win anything, but that's okay. I wasn't really expecting to, considering the fact that absolutely everyone except me at the competition were editors on their school newspapers.
Lastly, there's been a bit of club stuff and field trips. Science Alliance (the problematic club) had its first meeting, and barely anyone went. However, I did set up a volunteering thing with Catharine Baker (local assemblywoman), Lawrence Livermore National Labs, and Sandia National Labs helping elementary kids learn science. Of course, the officers all bailed on me last minute, but the one member that came to our meeting also came to the event and was super cool. At the event, there was one kid who did the funniest shit ever: one experiment was to draw something and put it in water to demonstrate chromatography, and he drew anything and everything, from the Great Chicago Fire to "smoke weed everyday". I also got to talk to one of the guys from Lawrence Livermore, who suggested colleges (keep career choices open, and community college isn't bad at all), internships at LLNL (have to be an undergrad though), and skills to learn (take English and Public Speaking classes– they'll help tremendously in the industry).
According to my sister, I'm really good at PR/outreach, so I'm tempted to just drop being co-president of the club (because I'm sick of dealing with the other president's shit) and only take outreach officer. The thing is, if I drop co-president, the club will probably fall apart since I'm the one doing most of the work. As for the field trip, we went to Genentech. Fun place, and it looks like the career I'm interested in (biostatistics) is becoming really big in the biotechnology industry, so I might luck out after college. Only issue with that is I'll need to learn programming, and I admit I'm pretty behind on that.
Well, that was a long block of text. It's been an interesting month. I'll update on other stuff– two of the big summer internships I applied to will send out acceptances tomorrow, so I'm excited– later. As for tea, I'm kind of in a hard spot right now because I think I've finished most, if not all, the teas from Japan, and I have nothing that I haven't reviewed other than tea bags from Trader Joe's or something. I'll probably figure something out since I actually have money now (but first, I need fencing equipment since I'm kind of a big part of the club at my school now).
Thanks for reading! I'll try to make more posts during spring break in a week or two.
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