Proudest Moments

[knittingfrenzy18]

Comment withheld by author.

[honks]

There's so much... My proudest moment is probably helping science olympiad start out at my school.

Science Olympiad only started 3 years ago at my school. I was a freshman when a teacher decided to do it; only 8 students decided to do it.
At all the competitions, everyone was running around doing random events. It was great and tiring. I remember (hopefully accurately!) the team placing 5th at an invitational, 2nd at regionals, and 11th at states that year. With only 8 members.

Plus, I'm from a pretty competitive state (Ohio), so doing this well was amazing.
Now our team is doing great! We have around 18 members so it's not as hectic as before.

[Kokonilly]

When I got a graduation card from the freshmen of my team and one of them said:

I admire your leadership, motivation, and grace under stress. not gonna lie your a role model

Passing over the poor grammar, it was really a nice thing to do and made up for the fact that my senior year season wasn't the greatest. I never thanked them, though I meant to. There are other proud moments, like when I actually got to clink at state, but that's one of the best feelings I've had that resulted from Science Olympiad.

[Cheesy Pie]

Hmm... probably either getting two 1st place medals my first year on the team (6th grade) or finishing the RFTS test in 10 minutes and getting 1st (7th grade).
My Stars partner from last year and I are doing Stars again this year, and we're going for less than 10 minutes now.

[labchick]

When three of my teammates medaled at Nats last year in Storm the Castle. One of them has a reading disorder so he has trouble with tests, etc. and to have that medal will change his whole life. It adds a lot of credibility to a high school transcript for college apps.

Second proudest moment: A few years ago, one of my team's C div members quit the team the night before the regional tournament and refused to give his two built items back to the team. One of these was a clock, for It's About Time. Another team member, his partner, had done the bulk of the studying for the written portion and helped a little bit building the clock. It was among the third set of events, and this team member had an event in the second set. On top of this, it was his very first SciOly competition. So he built a working clock with sparse materials in just under an hour. I can't remember everything he used and I have no clue how it worked, but some of the ingredients were dental floss and duct tape from a coach's purse, to illustrate to spur-of-the-moment nature of the "supplies". I was proud then. His parents and some team members did the necessary timing tests and wrote the data on a sheet of scrap paper. He came back from the event and said he did okay, but not that well. We were all proud he didn't get disqualified! So at the awards ceremony, we weren't expecting him to medal. When he did, our whole team (2 B div teams and a C div team, at the time) started cheering quite loudly which elicited some glares from the other teams. His medal? Gold. It probably wasn't life changing for him, but he inspired me, and our whole team, which eventually progressed from a tiny homeschool group team who thought medaling at Regionals was a big deal to our massive team now which is getting a little concerned that we may have to study our way to Nationals again.

[thisusernameistaken]

Either getting 5th overall and the spirit award at Boyceville, it was our team's very 1st year! Or getting 1st place at regionals. Maybe getting 10th in Food Science at the Wright State invitationals right behind Solon.

[hscmom]

Wow, having never competed, I have a million moments that probably mean very little to you but a lot to me. I'm a mom. A coach.

When my son was 10 he did reptiles and amphibians. At State, after all the events were done but before the ceremony, the team was throwing a frisbee around waiting and I was sitting on a bench nearby talking to another mom. I saw a lady in an official shirt talk to my son for just a minute and then he ran to me, forgetting the frisbee game. The lady was the reptiles/amphibians supervisor and she had just told him that he got 2nd in R&A and he was about to burst. His first medal ever. His big sister was his partner, but honestly, he was the one that knew the material. That probably was my first special moment.

There are always those moments where you HOPE you did well and THINK you did well, but aren't sure. My two daughters and their friend practiced hard on Picture This and got gold at regionals. They decided that they wanted to get gold at state, knowing that the other regional's gold team was a top-notch, hard to beat team. They put their minds to it and worked like dogs, practicing hour after hour, while keeping up with their other events. At the awards ceremony, the announcer read the third place team, and it was neither us nor the other region's champ. Then he read the second place team, and it was the team they set out to beat. And, the girls got the gold! Yippee. What a fun event.

Last year, my daughter worked hard making a ukulele for Sounds of Music/C. She borrowed a "real" one to learn how to play while making her own. She worked about six hours a week across town, borrowing a friend's tools and workshop. A few days before regionals, she got it done and ... the bridge immediately cracked from the pressure of the strings. She figured out a way to fix it and finally announced that it was done... and fixed. We had never heard this uke before and as far as we knew it could've sounded awful although it looked good. I told her to get her homemade uke and the borrowed one (which was a pretty nice one) and play something on each of them. I turned my back so I couldn't see which one she was playing. I told her the first one sounded a little sweeter but they both sounded good. I turned around and was so happy that the one that sounded better was her homemade one. It's been a year since Sounds of Music for her; she still plays that ukulele a couple of times a week at least. It was a huge project.

I can think of a few other moments, but those stick out....

[sweetcoop]

Well, what my proudest moment should have been was getting a gold medal in Road Scholar at the state competition with a perfect score when I was in sixth grade. Still can't believe that my partner and I couldn't figure out that we had practiced using the state test about a week before regionals, and that we had the answer key in you binder. Yeah our coach wrote the test, but we didn't figure that out until after we took it.

What probably is my proudest moment however is winning gold in Write It Do It at state my senior year. What actually makes me extremely proud of this moment is the fact that I had to be the person writing for the event my entire senior year, I was always the builder in years past, and the fact that I didn't get the instructions written out completely. The only real sad part about this is that it makes me one half of the group that won what will probably be the last gold medal for Science Olympiad that my high school will ever have. They had the team last year, but the coach left at the end of the season, and the school didn't see any reason to keep a Sci Oly team anymore.

[3nv1r0nm3ntal ch3m]

>be me
>be last year
>be at SciO nats
>be from maine
>be sitting in audience at closing ceremony
>MFW Maine jhs team wins spirit award
>MFW the team had already left
>nobody cheers
>then the C team from Ohio or some place like that wins their spirit award
>everyone cheers
>butterflies.jpg
>then people start chanting O-H-I-O
>and we just sit there because Maine didn't show up
>all of maine cried that day in shame.

inb4 not ohio- I don't remember who it was because I don't care.
inb4 I hate waterville.

[caseyotis]

Making it to states today for the first time ever. Medaling in all three of my events (even though I did that last year). FINISHING Experimental Design even though I got assigned to it THREE DAYS AGO.