duhwinning wrote:If your team sucks, it's not worth it. If you have a good team, it's worth it as long as you're not sensitive to your team being made fun of at school.
It only hurts to lose if you care too much.
quadratic wrote:Yes its worth it, winning is no the heart of Science Olympiad. The point of science Olympiad is to learn and we all have learned from it. If you never get to state, but learn about science and the world. Then you have achieved just as much as a team that wins nationals. It also teaches patience. It takes lots of patience to come back every year if you don't win, and to study for hours only to get tenth in your event.
EDIT: drat, I should read the post in front of me before posting.
well, i wasn't planning on launching into a tirade here, but after looking at these many exasperating and angering comments, i feel obliged to comment, despite the fact that this conversation has taken place 3 to 4 months ago.
well, to sum up every negative comment that has recently been posted, science olympiad is worth it. I mean, the events allow 2, sometimes 3 people, for one event. generally, you do best when you have 2 great people working together, and it can be frustrating to be the hard worker while your partner is the slacker (which is what happens with me in most of my events), but working with another person to achieve the same goal, doing your best and seeing how much you prepared for at competition and studying during non-competition days, it helps you know them well. And since you are in a team of 15 people, 30 with a JV, you really get to know you team really well. Even if you screw up at regionals, let's say, it doesn't matter because all those months of preparation have taught you something and all those meetings with your team, even if you spent all the time arguing, your team most likely will be very "family-like" during competition and you guys will hopefully get along. And science olympiad doesn't take time out of your "free time". As in my case, as well as for most people here, science olympiad is not a class offered during the school hours but it is instead an after school activity. Sure, i do afterschool sports for my school team and supposedly, that would conflict quite a bit. Science olympiad does require much time to study, but you can always pull a few all-nighters here and there and definitely before regionals, states, and nats, but you can always do science olympiad AFTER your sports practice is done. What i have noticed is that regionals and states, i don't know about nats, will be most likely on a saturday, so of course that might interfere with some sports game, but lets just think about it this way; you have only one regional competition, one shot to state, and only one state competition, but you might have 10 or more sports games in a season. Missing one or two games for science olympiad is DEFINITELY worth it, especially if you have tried really hard and worked really hard in science olympiad.
@duhwinner-if your team gets last place, lets say, it doesn't matter; what matters is that you gave it your best effort, you gained all that knowledge about various regions of science, and you've really got to know your team. Judging from the many "life stories" back in this thread, it appears that science olympiad has changed many people, and i for one, can vouch for that. Though many of us sciolympians are not geniuses, we all are hopefully not retarded. Many smart people tend to be shy and quiet, and i for one know that my whole life before science olympiad was huddled in a corner buried in a book and i walked around with my head down and blushed with embarrassment to talk to anyone. Now, like most people, ive changed. If you saw me in real life, im excessively talkative, i spazz a lot, as many people probably can vouch for me, and ive actually got a social life, no matter how miniscule it may be. back to getting last place. getting last place then should be a sign to your team that maybe it wouldn't hurt to work a bit harder and put more effort. as with the 15th place going to 2nd place, that can only be achieved by hard work. not by miracles, though i will not deny that miracles can and do happen. Sure, it might not suit you to be obsessed with science olympiad and spending your whole life on it, but you can't slack off and expect to go to nats. notice, its called a science olympiad TEAM, not a science olympiad individual competition. You have to learn to work with your team and if you are the hard worker and the rest of them aren't, then find some way to motivate them! surely if you are on here, scioly.org, you most likely care about science olympiad and if you do care, you probably want to find a way to do great at each competition. sure, this will obviously be hard for schools that never make it past regionals, and for those of you that are in that situation, i would like to say that "regionals is your one shot, so give it your all."
science olympiad is supposed to be hard. why would any university be willing to host the nats competition if it was a bunch of imbeciles competing for the "most stupidest team"??
@multivariable, you say that you looked up on google how to use excel the day of competition. Well, then how well did you do in compute this on the day of the competition?
compute this is hard, and i should know. the past two years ive done it, studied and practiced and done all i could, and ...ve sucked at it both of the two years. but you know what, im determined to do it this coming year. Compute this is hard. If you don't practice how to search efficiently, find your data, practicing graphing, and all those stuff required for the event, it doesn't matter how much you try to brag that "you learned everything the day of competition" even if you got first, because thats REGIONALS, i mean, come on! and of course, i can't see your state score, so...
[Z, is it even possible to learn everything to know about compute this on the day of competition and still getting a gold (for state, that is)?]
Eh, I'm not Z, but I'd like to ashamedly raise my hand and say that it is possible to learn (nearly) everything about CompThis on the day of a competition and still get state gold.
When I was in 7th grade, my first year in SciO, they put me on Anatomy, CompThis, ElevBridge (ohgod, builds), and RftS. We typically get the Regionals schedule pretty early, around January, so I was told I'd have to choose between RftS and CompThis. I had done a bit of work for RftS, so I picked that and they subbed someone else in for CompThis at Regs. When States came around, I still hadn't done much studying for CompThis since it seemed rather easy, instead focusing on my other 3 events.
My CompThis partner and I finished the test within about 20 minutes, triple-checked our work and walked out 20 minutes early, still not expecting gold (yeah, we're such pessimists). IIRC, the test was very easy - the data was given, they asked us to line-graph it, and the questions were very easy to answer with a simple keyword search - so there was a healthy bit of dumb luck that contributed to our not prepping and getting gold.
Note: The next year, I still didn't study (and had no prior experience with a CompThis test based on NASA.gov because I had to skip Regionals), and got 13th at States, which is much more realistic. However, I have heard that that year's test was rather difficult, with the winning team only scoring about 70/100.
Hershey Science Olympiad 2009 - 2014 Volunteer for Michigan SO 2015 - 2018
Short answer: If it's an easy test, then yeah, you probably could go in with background knowledge alone and no practical event experience and win. State tests are unlikely, though.
Olathe North HS, 2011-2013 | National Runner-Up, Sounds of Music (2012) Never lose the joy of competing in the pursuit of winning
I don't do any building events and I never plan to - so I get to learn information when studying, and it's very much worth it (and I can win medals etc. for studying).
2014 New York City Div C Regionals
2012 New York Div B States
2012 Lower Hudson Div B Regionals
2011 Lower Hudson Div B Regionals
There is no question. SO is worth it, no matter what. You gain knowledge, you make friends, and you gain so many qualities.
For me, I think my SO career started at age six. Yes, my friends, six. I am Chinese, we live in America, and so it stands that the Chinese community of our city would have a Chinese school. So we do, and I'm very gifted at Chinese, so I went into the older class instead of the younger class where I was supposed to be. In the older class, there were people five years older than I was. But that class also contained one girl, the only girl (call this person Elina) old enough there to do Science Olympiad. And she talked about it...and it was amazing. I thought immediately, I wanted to do it when I was old enough. So for a year or so, every Sunday, I looked forward to hearing Elina talk about Science Olympiad. The first event I ever heard of was Mission Possible. And since then, I have been waiting for that event. (It seems that this year, I get my wish.) I started looking over science-y stuff, just to be prepared for some time in the future when I would be able to join SO. The books and texts were simple, but I still ended up knowing more than pretty much all of my classmates.
The next year, in second grade, I lived next to this Asian girl (let's call her Susanna) who started doing Division A Science Olympiad (she was 9). She always knew so much, always on the lookout for something to help her with events...I wanted to be that person someday, knowing, studying, loving every moment of competition. She had a friend (call this person Julia), who did Science Olympiad at that point (although she quit later), and they discussed it all the time. Since we walked home together after school (we lived in the same neighborhood) and were pretty good friends overall, I heard a lot about Science Olympiad. This meant I got ever more obsessed and determined to do it.
In third grade, we weren't allowed to do Science Olympiad, which I thought was really stupid since the third graders were allowed to do every other extracurricular activity except for Science Olympiad and this exclusive fifth grade club. But I found out we were allowed to do it next year, and so, kept on studying and looking over all things science-y, and started to talk to our Division A coordinator (which was a lot, since I was in the advanced classes, and she taught them, and was also the coordinator for Chess Club, which I was in). I got really, really excited that year. Even though I wasn't in Science Olympiad yet, I talked about it all the time.
In fourth grade, we were finally allowed to join. The day I got the SO registration sheet (I got it earlier than the rest of the school because of the advanced classes) was one of the happiest days of my life. The day after, I turned in the registration, and secured my place as the first Science Olympian that year. And I didn't regret it. Fifth grade was even better, because the teacher trusted me more. In those two years, I did Elements, Compounds, and Mixtures, Orientation, Map Reading, No Bones About It, and a few others that I can't remember. But those two years hardened my resolve to do it every year I could. And in Chinese School, everyone else was in Science Olympiad, because they were old enough, and they brought practice tests and whatnot, and I loved looking at them, loved listening to them talk about it. But they were talking about another division of SO (yes, Division B), and it sounded so great that I vowed that I would do SO just to see what they loved so much about it.
Then came sixth grade, the beginning of Division B. I had no idea how different and how much better it was than Division A. Our coach was different, but better. Fun, hilarious, and absolutely brilliant. We were allowed in places that almost no other students were allowed. We were pulled out of class, treated like we were special. But that wasn't the best part (although I admit it was fun). No, the best part was when we got to stay after school and on weekends and worked on SO, when I met all these wonderful people who loved SO, tenth and eleventh graders who loved SO so much they came back to coach, teammates who were witty and sarcastic but brilliant and didn't fail at anything. They studying, the working, it was wonderful. And then came Regionals. For Wright Stuff, I stayed at the school until 9:30 pm working on it once, and then the Mylar ripped right before competition. It was so very disappointing. That year, we had seven teams from my school (the middle school), and four from the Junior High. Now, I was on team B, but that didn't bother me, because the seventh graders were on Team A, and they knew more than I did. But I got a gold (Can't Judge A Powder) and a silver medal at Regionals that year, meaning I beat people who had had three or four more years of experience than I did. I beat my school, I beat the Junior High, who had made it to Nationals twelve years running. That gold medal was what made me realize that I could do it, that I could beat anyone if I put my mind to it.
States was no less amazing. Three teams from the Junior High made it, so our coach gave one of the spots to a Drake team. Ten of the fifteen spots were made of seventh graders, and I was one of the five sixth graders. I actually medaled at States, getting second at Physical Science Lab, with my blade score being 1500+, regardless of the fact that the test had been canceled due to the fact that they didn't have a test. The person who beat us was a genius builder in ninth grade, so I was more than happy. AJHS won State for the thirteenth time running, and they were going to Nats.
And then, Nats came. And our coach picked me to do a trial event. Me! A little sixth grader who had only medaled three medals! I was so very happy... My partner was an awesome girl who was very, very smart, and we did Optics. For weeks before, I went around with a college textbook, reading up on Optics, equations, and such. I looked up on everything I could. And even though we got eighteenth at Nats (for both my school and for my Optics event), I was happy. The U of I campus was great, and it was a great experience. I learned more in one year than I had in all my years of schooling combined.
In seventh grade, it was even better. We had one team from the Junior High, six teams from the middle school, two of the middle school teams made it to State, the Junior High made their one team, and I made friends. Not that I hadn't had them last year; it was just that this year, I made really, really good friendships that are still going strong. I medaled twice at Regionals, got two golds at State (Towers and Ornithology), and went to Nats again with our team. It was just as great as last year, maybe even more so. For two months before Nats, I stayed after school every day, working until six or seven. One or two weeks before Regionals and States, it was the same story. My coach is pretty impressed with me, and he has basically promised to let me do any events I would like to next year.
Now I am going into eighth grade, and I really can't wait. There are some things that just can't be replaced, and I honestly think SO is one of those things. People think I go overboard, actively competing for 7 or 8 events and study for four extra, but I don't think that is overboard. I really love it. The point of it is really not to win, but to learn. My friend once said to someone, "Is the expectation and disappointment of a competition really what you love, or is it the science? For me, it's the science." He's right. No matter what, SO is worth it. It's not about winning. It's about learning and loving it. And I do. So yes, it's worth it. SO just gets you excited and gives you initiative to study.
Sorry about this obscenely long post.
Last edited by foreverphysics on August 8th, 2011, 11:12 am, edited 2 times in total.
Physics is difficult for 99% of the world's population because they don't understand it. The other 1% know too much.
No guy who talks to that many girls in 1st grade ends up in SO! 