User:AnotherPenguin/Stories

Overview of my SciOly Career

7th Grade (2018-19)

I faded into obscurity in 7th grade and was relegated to the second team. My first invitational was Carmel Valley Invitational (yippee). We watched Arthur Benjamin (Ted Talk math magic guy) try to scam people with overpriced books that he wrote. At Mesa Robles, I got my first medal, and I didn't earn it (I was a filler for ELG lol)! At Kraemer Invitational, I learned what Anatomy and Physiology was like the hard way and for whatever reason thought, "yeah, I'll keep doing this."

Medals on a Beethoven bust following the 2019-20 season.

Medals on a Beethoven bust following the 2020-21 season.

8th Grade (2019-20)

In 8th grade, we started preparing earlier in the year, which ultimately meant more time to goof off. At the JT/Kraemer/OSCA scrimmage, I displayed my Game On potential (1st), along with placements in Code (2nd), Anatomy (3rd), Experimental (2nd). My heredity career ended with a whimper (6th in my best event, although in retrospect I might've deserved it). I blew an over two-minute lead on the timed question for Code and had to complete an entire EXPD write-up by myself in 50 minutes. We started the season with a mini-vacation to Texas. We won first place, and capped off a successful invitational by eating... Indian food in Texas. Most people would eat something more noteworthy in Texas, like, you know, steak, but instead we decided to have Indian food we already have back in California. I'm not salty. We then flew up to Sacramento and were steamrolled by Kennedy. At UTA, I had unsuccessfully created a strange flying bird with acceleration, so for Churchill, we decided to pull something completely different and make an accelerating fish. This plot saw little success, unfortunately, and I have no idea why.

To start the year known forever as 2020, we flew up to Sacramento again for Mira Loma. We amazingly did not place in Game On with another accelerating bird. We also got tiered in Experimental Design for being off-topic, but the only thing that was really off was the proctor's grading. Mira Loma distributed all of the Game Ons to each of the competing teams, so we may or may not have redesigned Kennedy's design (if Kennedy wanted they could see ours and have a good laugh, so I think that's pretty fair). Mesa Robles invitational, in Southern California, was my best invitational yet, but our team had a sick team member and lost to Kraemer. At Jeffrey Trail Invitational we crept marginally closer to Kennedy. By that, I mean we lost to all three Kennedy teams and our second team in Game On. Thanks to Umaroth (or his teammate, idk), we took the most exciting code test of all time, featuring 2600-point aristocrats with z being the most common letter. Somewhat predictably, my partner could not read his own handwriting, and we couldn't solve the timed question. Again. At Kennedy Invitational, I finally won Game On, and all it took was the topic of Heredity (it all comes full circle). A faithful replica has been created here to commemorate the moment: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/373627622. They allowed three people for Codebusters, but we still placed second as a team of two. It is only due to my utmost integrity that we didn't try and rob a third medal for our 2nd place. At regionals, we finally won Codebusters now that Kennedy wasn't there to destroy us.

9th Grade (2020-21)

In 9th grade, I joined the Northwood high team through the team tryouts. Because of the rules replay, most of my events stayed the same. By the end of the year, I did the same events as last year.

I did relatively well at BearSO, receiving colors of medals I never knew existed. At Rickards, we managed to get 6th in Fermi with no prep. I also soloed in Astronomy, so my 16th place is a reliable indicator of my overall skill. At Mira Loma, we wrote that Galileo said, and I quote, "behold the boys of the good". At GGSO, we took a code test based on myspeld ( :D ) aristocrats. As my first Anatomy competition this year, GGSO treated me with a load of histology questions.

At regionals, the team as a whole bounced back. I got a 1st place Game On medal with this beaver game on. The Codebusters test writers were nice and decided to make the longest test conceivable. My lack of knowledge about PTCH1 prevented me from succeeding in Anatomy.

This year held my first state competition. In Codebusters, we persevered through a test full of BTS quotes and entire chunks of song lyrics. I'm not sure how we got second in Anatomy, but maybe the 20 matching questions helped. And we don't talk about experimental design.

10th Grade (2021-22)

It's About Time I did a build event. And boy did I enjoy it!

Our first competition was Rickards invitational. We were fooled by the tournament directors, who 1) had us thinking we'd get the tests back in any period of time considered the near future and 2) had us thinking that we didn't place in EXPD. We were bailed out in It's About Time because they did not test for builds, beginning the cycle of procrastination.

SONI was much more exciting. We peaked in code, with one team trying what is best described as the equivalent of an Air Raid Offense (blitz aristocrats) and the other trying a conservative power run (mainly the other ciphers), and both scoring points. Anatomy was "Guess the Medicine?" and we guessed wrong. The other team had a rougher experiment than we did, you could say.

Golden Gate was bad. Plain and simple. We didn't solve timed in code. Our IAT device score was decent but Umaroth doubled our test score. We guessed what a double pendulum was. Overall, a great time!

At regionals we did the most scuffed surface tension experiment ever- using a spoon to put the water and salt/sugar solution on the penny and then measure the diameter of the resulting blob. Oh, and I swapped the terms solute and solvent.

And we don't talk about experimental design.