How has Science Olympiad affected your life?

[Helix_Nebula_Freak]

I was just curious to know if Science Olympiad had the same profound impact on anyone else's life as it has on mine.

Let's see. When I first started Science Olympiad, I was extremely shy, had no friends, and really didn't talk above a murmur. Scioly changed that. Not so much the science, but the fact that I was on a team, that my team wanted me, that I contributed. It was a huge rite of passage for me.

What about you guys?

[sk8lynne]

Scio has definitely affected my life. I really didnt have any friends when I started scio, but now, some of my best friends I met because of scio. When most of the people on my team first met me, they thought that I was a really quiet girl. But now, for some reason, a lot of people say im "secretly malicious." lmao!

[sciencegeek100]

its let me go to Illinois, DC again, Georgia, win lots of medals (regionals & state plus one national NON-team medal) I love it cauz its fun, it an extracurricular and i get to hang out with nerds and be known as "the white kid" (inside joke) which is an improvement from my freshman year where everybody just called me "sean's little brother" (inside joke)

but thats the last 2 years not jr high which i also competed

[scifipi]

This is my first year of Science Olympiad, and to me it's the best thing that's ever happened. (In school at least!) Science Olympiad is better than any after-school activity or anything else of the sort. My team-mates and I devote a lot of time to this and we are usually proud of the results. In Junkyard Challenge I always snap the mousetrap on my finger though...

[RandomPerson]

Well when I was in middle school and I was on the middle school's division B team it was an incredibly positive experience, I loved that being friend and having good relations were really important to the team, perhaps they were too prioritized over studying, but better that way then the complete opposite way around (where the only thing the team cares about is being good).

This year, at my high school, its been quite the opposite. I've been put on our Team 2 / B team, and the way we've been treated by the other team has been ridiculous. I don't want to get into to much, I've done so on chat already, my team (Team 2) has been basically on our own, This part hasn't been too bad, and the practice sessions have been nice because my fellow team mates are really nice people (well most anyways). The other team has been really hostile to us, not sharing resources, closing their door during mutual practice sessions etc. Today it got kind of ridiculous with how mad their coach got at Team 2, (we were being called trouble makers for wanting to take the Athens invitationals test, and were threatened to be disbanded next year).

[Helix_Nebula_Freak]

That's horrible.

[zyzzyva980]

Wow, that sounds like my former band director. Seriously, that is one bad coach if they call you "troublemakers" for wanting to take a practice test. I'd be very angry. That's really disappointing.

[gneissisnice]

Scio is probably the single most important thing I did in school.

It gave me leadership abilities and let me be part of a team, and I made a lot of friends in it. Even in college, some of my classes were incredibly easy thanks to scio. I'm an Earth Science major, so last semester I took Geo 102 (The Earth) and from doing events like Rocks and Minerals, Dynamic Planet (both glaciers and volcanoes and earthquakes), Awesome Aquifer, Ecology, and Remote Sensing, I already knew around 90% of the class. When we did mineral ID in my geo lab, I had them all identified by sight, while everyone else took a lot longer, using the charts. As for chemistry, there were a bunch of things I knew just from doing Food Science that I wouldn't have know otherwise. As a science major, science olympiad definitely helped prepare me for college classes.

[sciolykid101]

(we were being called trouble makers for wanting to take the Athens invitationals test, and were threatened to be disbanded next year). I won't be doing Science Olympiad again.

RandomPerson52, I don't understand...?

[Rachee]

It helped me with my studying habits. And before Scioly, I really didn't like science, now it's awesome!!

I've been able to CLEP out of most of my science classes without even studying, and it's made all of my science classes so much simpler(thanks to Ecology, Forensics and Cell Bio mostly).