What does your school think of your SO team?

[croman74]

My school doesn't hate it. It's just one of the many clubs, and the kids in it aren't complete nerds. Most of them have a social life as well, so people are fine with it.

[soobsession]

Our school...well...
The kids have no clue. I might mention "SO" and they'd be like "SO? Whats SO?" or they'd misinterpret it as the word "so". They think we're all nerds. But hey, we're proud of it (or at least I am ). Then some might say "Wait, didn't you get ___ place for some science thing?" We really don't care. We just live in our happy world of happy science geeks.

The teachers, staff, and principal/vice principals don't care that much. They might wish some of us good luck. The principal once came in to give us pep talk once though. As for the vice principal, he just thinks we're all geniuses and when we don't live up to that standard, he's like "And you're a Science Olympian?!?" He sometimes calls us "Science people" too.

The Board (of Education) cares enough about us to give us a mini "awards ceremony" for participating since my school does have some reputation. Of course, the same "awards ceremony" was given to the Math Counts team and the Debate Team.

[sr243]

SO in my school is new as they only competed in it for 3 years. I have been influenced by my brother who did it for 6 years, so I try hard. We barely can get 15 people to participate and almost no one else knows about it. Our coach and students don't care much with few exceptions (i'm one of them). I told some people that I didn't want to do track and some field trip because of science olympiad, they just thought I was insane or mental even though I have a high IQ. Sports get all the attention in my school, getting a 3rd place trophy in our third year is quite amazing and no one besides the people in it care. I do wish that we could go to nats but the school won't let us, yea the district has problems.

[HappySciencePie]

teachers love us enough to give us extra credit if we get medals and stuff, but half of the students don't care and the other half think we're nerds with no lives

Well yeah, except my teacher didn't give me any extra credit D:
A few of them who listen to our stories either want to join next year or are afraid of SO xD
On the bus, I heard some kid calling us nerds :[
And some kids don't even know what SO is <_<

[scigeek95]

Generally, we all have at least some form of a social life. People think I'm a nerd at least. But then again, at least that was already my reputation before I joined. I don't mind, since I get to brag we made it to nats and we get days off of school. The science thing I brag to friends, though. The leaving school thing shuts up meanies quick though! They only wish they were as awesome as us!
As for administrators, they're really supportive. A few teachers are coaches, and a teacher is assistant head coach...

[croman74]

A cool fact that I learned today was that Dr. Seuss made up the word nerd.

[EastStroudsburg13]

Our high school barely mentions it, a lot of people don't know it exists. Or they refer to it as "Geek Olympics" . Personally I don't care, but I'd like more recognition. At my old school we got some recognition, which was nice. But, like always, some people just don't care.

[gneissisnice]

It's kinda popular in our school.
People know im on the team, so when there are announcements that we do well at a tournament, people congratulate me.
I am often asked to explain what it is though. People get kinda disappointed that its not really a science fair. They get even more disappointed when they found out that all of my events are just tests

[Avis_de-Incendia]

Lol. Meh. At School, we all have no lives. We get congrats from random teachers when we do well in competitions, and so yeah.

[kjhsscioly]

most people would say " huh? whats SciOly" and then require a full explanation. Only most plussers (word for those in a magnet program called PI+) would really know what it is .

We get very little funding compared to our athletic teams. For example, the track team gets a bus to and from meets twice a week for 2 and a half months, while our district cant provide the Science Olympiad team a bus to state ONCE in a year.

Most teachers don't care, and our coach cares, but doesn't do much about it, not even the occasional motivational talk. he basically fills out the forms and gives us the team number and schedule. Oh... and he supervises us an hour a week after school on Tuesdays . The only teachers apart from the coach who has ever asked what i won is my geometry/physics teacher, and she coaches mathcounts so she cares about academic competitions.... otherwise, i don't know that all the teachers know what it is.

All in all, we still do okay, usually placing 3 or 4 out of 39 on state, but we did make it to nationals last year, and i was one of two 7th graders on the team