So…my Division B Science Olympiad career has ended.
I never thought this day would really come.
Even a week ago, when I wrote that
earlier blog post, I knew it was
ending, I knew that was my last
Division B competition…but I also felt like it was still so far away. And now
it’s done. It’s gone.
This Nationals, I didn’t do nearly
as well as I would have liked (aka highest placing was 26th and in
an event I didn’t even like), but despite that, I’m very happy with how things
turned out. See, this Nationals, I really realised
what I loved and what Science Olympiad really meant to me. I won’t lie and say
that I didn’t feel a whooshing sensation of disappointment (mostly in myself)
and sadness when I didn’t get called up for my best and favourite event, but
later, after that had blown over, I realised that I wasn’t nearly as upset as I
should have been. In past years, I’ve almost cried when I didn’t get top ten or
top twenty or whatever my goal was. This year, I was disappointed, but I wasn’t
upset. And when I thought about why,
that’s when I consciously realised what I’ve known all along.
Science Olympiad isn’t just about
medalling or winning—not even at the national level.
I can tell you right now why I did
so horribly in Reach for the Stars. It’s not because I’m bad at the event, or
because I don’t know astronomy. The reason is because while the test writer is
very good, they asked specific questions using things that you will never,
ever, ever apply in astronomy—and
that’s not what I studied. No, I can’t tell if an image is infrared or x-ray
sometimes if there’s no reference point, or if a random cluster of dots happens
to be Scorpius (especially without the constellation boundaries or RA/DEC), or
if a random photo is short or long exposure just by looking at it. But I can tell you all the spectral lines of
each type of star. I can tell you all about black holes, Hawking radiation, the
Schwarzschild radius and metric, and accretion principles. I can tell you about
Thorne-Zytkow objects, Herbig-Haro objects, Bok globules, emission nebulae, and
absorption nebulae. I can tell you how to apply the Doppler shift, Planck’s
Law, the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, the LRT, Wien’s Displacement, Hubble’s Law, and
any number of others like that. I can tell you the exact triple alpha process,
or how a star is born, or how Cepheids work as “yardsticks”, or what a star
population is, or how an H-R diagram works and the math behind it. I can tell
you about binary star systems, multiple star systems, how to find the mass of a
star, spectral lines and spectroscopy, parallax (trigonometric or stellar) and
the distance modulus. I can tell you how to read a light curve, how to identify
a type of star or system by reading the light curve, how to read a radiation
curve, how to find the temperature and luminosity, and how to apply bolometric
measurements. I can explain the Big Bang and redshift, why stars seem to change
brightness over time, the internal processes of stars, how they are born, the
processes inside by which they live, how they die, what happens after they die,
the limits of their mass, the effects it has on the interstellar medium...I
could go on, because I know so much more,
but I think you get the idea. I know
astronomy. All the thirty one teams that beat me...how many of them can tell
you about all of those? How many of them know half of Carroll and Ostlie by
heart? How many of them help write an astronomy blog not only for Science
Olympiad, but to expose others to the wonders of astronomy?
My failure at Nationals wasn’t because I didn’t know things, but because
I knew all the wrong things for that
specific event. In fact, there are quite a few people who told me that I wasn’t
studying for Reach for the Stars at all, but rather Astronomy—in Division C. As
Reach for the Stars is the Division B version of Astronomy in C, I didn’t see
the problem with that. But I am also glad that I didn’t focus on the simple,
plain Reach for the Stars things, but went above and beyond. I now have at
least two years’ worth of college information in my brain about astronomy. And
that’s the thing—when I didn’t medal, I knew it wasn’t because I failed, or
didn’t know enough. It was, quite simply, because they tested on things that
you would never use in real astronomy and therefore I didn’t study (and the
notes restrictions didn’t help either).
But this is what made me honestly, consciously realise what Science
Olympiad is about. It’s not just about medalling, but about learning. It is about learning, meeting
new people, and gathering new friends. I learned so much about astronomy
through Reach for the Stars (even if I did
do horribly). I’m more suited to Astronomy because of that—because that’s what
I know a lot about. Over the past four years I’ve done SO, I can’t even begin
to tell you the amount of knowledge I’ve gained. I know all about aerodynamic
principles now, about optics, thermodynamics, electricity, fluids and
mechanics, forensics, heredity, chemistry, and so, so much more. As a direct result of Science Olympiad, I can now
tell you the abbreviations of all 50 states, or the most dedicated hockey fans
(Flyers), most of the Jewish holidays, the cost of a five day trip across the
country, and a whole bunch more that I probably don’t need to know. I’ve made
the best friends of my entire life (as I’ve mentioned before), I’ve found
purpose and everything I really wanted, and I found science.
I think I’ve always known this all along—I’ve mentioned it several times
before, and argued with people several times before using these arguments, and
written essays (to use the term loosely) on it before. But now...now I really
think I truly understand that concept. See, this Nats, something happened that
went along the lines of this.
We were studying in our dorms (three other people and myself), and one
of our test collaborators said that she had a test she wanted to give to me. I
said okay, but that I would do it later when my partner wasn’t busy. I casually
mentioned to her about putting it up on the test exchange of scioly.org or
maybe put up a few notes on it, and the immediate response of everyone in that
room was, “Why would you ever put
tests up on the exchange or help write the wiki? That’s just helping other
teams!” At that moment, I was stunned, and the only coherent words to come out
of my mouth was, “Well, why not?” because I couldn’t think about just how wrong
their logic was.
I have never written a single test that has not been put up on the test
exchange, whether by me or if I asked someone else to do it for me. I have
written half the Thermodynamics wiki and the Reach for the Stars wiki, in
addition to helping and editing many, many other wiki pages, and in fact now
hold the title of WikiMod. What if every other person in Science Olympiad felt
the same way as my teammates did? Those people in the room relied heavily on
the test exchange for practise, and on the wiki for information, and the
recently upgraded image gallery for ideas. Would they have that if other people
didn’t contribute? See, the point of Science Olympiad isn’t to keep everything
to yourself in hopes of beating everyone else out there. It’s also to teach others and expose them. That’s why I do so much with scioly.org and why I am
voluntarily giving up dozens, if not hundreds of hours this summer to host a
summer study session for SO.
I guess at this point, I’ve done all that I can do with Division B SO.
Nats this year was a perfect goodbye—it really was. Maybe I didn’t medal.
That’s okay. This year, I found myself having lots of fun, even though I was
stressing like crazy. I hung out with some people from Kansas (lesson learned:
if you want to find someone, just stand outside their group’s door and stare at
them until they get uncomfortable and go, “Can I...help you?”), met some people
from Georgia (long haired hippies, hehe), went on some roller coasters, had a
group of green-haired Californians scare the heck out of half my team (you’re still awesome, Paly, don’t worry),
managed to break campus rules and get away with it (they weren’t major rules, I
promise, it was just some printing things...), and basically had a blast.
That’s the difference between some teams, I think. I can compare two of
the top teams from Nationals this year—I’ve heard a lot about both. Both teams take SO very, very seriously (hah,
understatement of the century), but from what I’ve heard, their team dynamic is
totally different. One of the teams was about winning, winning, winning. People on their team get so
stressed that they will literally cut off all friends and human contact around
Nats and alienate themselves. Sometimes they will seriously hurt people with
what they say or do, no matter if it is inadvertently or not. They don’t stand
with messing around during Nats—everything must be totally serious, and no one
is really truly enjoying themselves. They stress,
just stress and completely forget how to take things down a notch. SO, to them,
is just a competition, just something to win and show off with. The other
team...well, when we walked in on them, they weren’t stressing. They were
having fun and joking around with each other, and the board with all their
events on it had quite a few self-deprecating jokes. Yes, they want to win.
Yes, they are uber-competitive. But they don’t forget that that’s not all there
is to SO, and they have fun with it.
They’re one of the most respected teams in the country, and in my opinion, one
of the best not only because they are so freaking good (which they are), but
also because they lose themselves not in the competition of SO, but in SO itself. (and also they’re nice
people). It actually turned out that this second team placed higher than the
first team whose purpose was wholly focused on winning.
But my team also isn’t what I remember it being a few years ago; it’s no
longer the perfect team I dreamed of being a part of when I got older...and
because of that, I’m now ready to move on, and find another start in Division
C. Maybe I can help the team grow, help it mature and make it a real team.
Maybe I can do more with my high school team, and become more involved than I
ever did in Division B. Maybe we can even win States next year and still go to
Nationals, and I can still keep competing. And I also know now that I will
never, ever be done with Science Olympiad, no matter how old I get.
