User:CookiePie1

work in progress

CookiePie1 is a Division C captain from South Brunswick High School in New Jersey. He has been participating in Science Olympiad since 8th grade, in the 17-18 season.

How I joined Scioly
In Middle School, our coach put up posters about scioly. At our school, only seventh and eighth graders were allowed to join. When I was in 7th grade, I saw the posters and said, "Huh. That sounds interesting". I put the thought to the back of my mind and the night before tryouts, I realized that as part of the tryout process, I had to write an essay. It was already too late, and I didn't know a lot about scioly, so I shrugged and put it off until the next year, when the posters went up again. This time, my friends who were already in scioly encouraged me to join. So, I said "Why not?" and actually wrote the essay. I didn't have any idea what to study for, so I walked in and took the test. I got in, and the rest was history.

Thermodynamics
I really enjoyed doing this event, and got to experience it in both B and C. My favorite memories of doing thermo are sitting at my kitchen table for hours watching water cool down. During my first year, when we were building, I have a vivid memory of me and my partner making a huge mess out of a can of spray foam (that stuff gets EVERYWHERE). As for a lot of the concepts, I didn't really understand a lot of it until the end of my freshman year of high school, but it was definitely a great experience learning a topic in a deeper and deeper sense over the course of 2 years. Thermo also introduced me to the wonderful resource that is HyperPhysics. Now, much of my leisure reading is done on HyperPhysics, which has expanded a lot of my knowledge of physics. From taking data from the hot water, I was also introduced to simple Arduino projects. I once attempted to take the data with a thermistor, some resistors, and an Arduino. Of course, it wasn't accurate at all, but it definitely gave me a good introduction.

Protein Modeling
Also one of my favorite events. At the end of my eighth grade year, I saw that one of the division C trial events was protein modeling (NJ). Being naive and curious, I started looking into it, and I remember being really fascinated even though I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at. In freshman year, I signed up for protein modeling. I was given the event, and I quickly realized that it was the event that nobody wanted to do. In the beginning of the season, I was busy with marching band, and my partners never responded to my texts, so I just didn't study for it. When the captains did evaluations, I had little to show and they took me off of protein for LISO and gave me Dynamic Planet instead. I was sad, but I was able to move on. When LISO rolled around, one of our team members had an unforseen conflict, and I was slapped on the event after ignoring it for 3 months. We ended up getting 19th, which was one place higher than the other team's 20th place. I started studying harder, and eventually was able to get 5th at states. As ridiculous as it sounds, I was pretty disappointed with a 5th, as I expected to do better. As someone who hasn't taken Bio in school, doing Protein gave me a good background, and I really enjoyed it. I was also able to develop the skill of reading research papers. Most of the information specific to this year's topic (Anti-CRISPR) came from two research papers which I had to thoroughly understand. This was a huge challenge to me, as my reading level was not at that caliber yet. As I progressed through the year, I read the paper in chunks, and by the time states came around, I could almost actually understand it. Of course, there is still a large amount of information that I still don't get, but it was amazing to reflect and see how much I had improved since the beginning of the year.

Dynamic Planet
As previously mentioned, I was put on Dynamic Planet for LISO after being kicked off protein. At the time, I was quite preoccupied with my other events and school stuff. As a result, I didn't really start learning the material until about a week and a half before LISO. I realized how much I had to do, and I started to really work hard. I remember working on it during lunch and during English class. Learning DP has largely caused my habit of bringing my laptop to school every day. This was my first introduction to scioly earth science events. I enjoyed it, but I also realized that this wasn't my thing. I also, for the 1st time, realized that glaciers move (yes, I'm that dumb). For my whole life, I never knew a lot about Glaciers, and always thought they were just large masses of ice. I'm glad that my one-time experience with DP has opened my eyes just a little bit more.

Mission Possible
Work in Progress