Science Olympiad in Real Life

[quizbowl]

I'm wondering, has science olympiad knowledge helped anyone in the real world, besides me, and how?

I work at a summer camp, at I went with my kids to arts and crafts yesterday; they were making small aquariums. While i was making a, dare i say, boss aquarium, one of the arts and crafts specialists brought out a box of seashells to decorate them with. I nearly collapsed; the box was full of cypraeas, worthenias, conuses, ammonites and others. I started identifying them, and my campers now idolize me and think i am so smart. I happened to even snag a few of the shells for future reference.

[paleonaps]

At Nationals, my friend was in immense pain from a brutal week of the Presidential Fitness test (which I didn't have to take because I had a procedure done to remove an ingrown toenail). I felt so sorry for him that I decided to help. I used trigger points on his muscles to relieve the pain and he was well enough to play Ultimate later.
BTW, quizbowl, are you a boy or a girl?

[Celeste]

We were talking about current events in my AP World History class around the time of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile and other places, and when it was my turn to say my opinion, I started using all the technical terms about earthquakes that I learned from Dynamic Planet. Everyone just stared at me with this weird look, except for the other kid in S.O. from my class, (she used to be my DyPlan partner) who just grinned. Plus, whenever I'm hanging out outside with my friends and a bird flies over or lands in a tree or something, I try to figure out what kind it is. If I can identify it, I blurt it out, so my friends know me as a real-life bird nerd. Also, though I don't know if this is considered 'helping' in my real life, every time I see a plastic soda bottle I think about how exactly I could launch it a couple hundred feet in the air while carrying an egg. I guess the biggest impact S.O. has on my real life is how it makes it overall totally awesome.

[quizbowl]

another thing that SO helps is quizbowl; there have been countless times where i was able to answer a question due to my former events.
and to answer paleonaps' question, I have a Y chromosome as well as an X.

[paleonaps]

So do I! I have a Z as well, but that's normal, right?

[chia]

...whenever I'm hanging out outside with my friends and a bird flies over or lands in a tree or something, I try to figure out what kind it is. If I can identify it, I blurt it out, so my friends know me as a real-life bird nerd.

saaame 8D then my friends look at me funny, unless its kjhsscioly. then she just argues with me about whether i was right or not

[quizbowl]

So do I! I have a Z as well, but that's normal, right?

probably not; maybe that explains your craziness.

[zyzzyva980]

I don't get much of a chance to use Science Olympiad in real life. Think about my events:
Trajectory: Situations involving catapults do not arise often.
Dynamic Planet: The last earthquake in Kansas was on New Year's Day in 2008. And how many volcanoes do you know of in Kansas?
Road Scholar: I'm not on many road trips in which I find it extremely necessary to know the stream gradient of a nearby creek.
Experimental Design: I may have way too much free time, but thinking up experiments is not something I do often.
Meteorology: With a dad that's a meteorologist, I would have known all this anyway.
Compute This: I do use Excel on a regular basis; unfortunately, my love for the program has kept me from actually having a real life.
Pentathlon: Just... no.

[AlphaTauri]

I don't get much of a chance to use Science Olympiad in real life. Think about my events:
Trajectory: Situations involving catapults do not arise often.

Yah, same for Trajectory, but I've at least gotten good at hitting my teammates with it at practice. Although I guess I do use SO in real life...sometimes I go outside at night and try to identify constellations with my leftover RFS knowledge. And I try to ID the birds in my backyard (since I'm not on Ornithology, this usually involves me running upstairs for a field guide and finding out that the bird flew away while I was running up/down the stairs).

Pentathlon: Just... no.

[kjhsscioly]

...whenever I'm hanging out outside with my friends and a bird flies over or lands in a tree or something, I try to figure out what kind it is. If I can identify it, I blurt it out, so my friends know me as a real-life bird nerd.

saaame 8D then my friends look at me funny, unless its kjhsscioly. then she just argues with me about whether i was right or not

lol... our little wood duckie

at summer school, my and someone else were discussing 2012 possibilities, and i started explaining how lots of earthquakes could do damage by using earths natural frequency and building up.... go crave the wave