User:CookiePie1

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 decided to try out, and I got in. I would have to say that my biggest regret is not joining in 7th grade. But, I still have 3 years.

=Medals=

=Events=

Summary
2018 Events (B) - Thermodynamics, Write It Do It, Indoor Bottle Rocket (Ping Pong Parachute)

2019 Events (C) - Thermodynamics, Protein Modeling, Dynamic Planet, Mission Possible, Wright Stuff

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. In my eighth grade year, we were pretty clueless, and I remember continually discussing how we were going to build our device, but we put off the actual building until I looked at my calendar and realized we had 3 weeks left before states. We ended up rushing through the building process and we didn't even get all the data we needed to. However, we still did well, and it gave me nothing but excitement to do thermo again as a freshman.

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
I was put on mission from the very beginning of the season in my freshman year. Looking back, my feelings about this event were largely dependent on my various partners. When I first got my event assignments, my main reaction to mission was fear. I knew it was going to be a difficult event, but I wasn't completely prepared to face just exactly how difficult it would be. With my first partner, we had a great time building. This was very much my first introduction into a true build event. Sure, I did thermo the previous year but to me, the scope is different and it's really not a true, mechanical build event. We got 12th at LISO. I was fairly surprised because I knew that our device wasn't very great. I was too caught up in the fact that we only had 3 scorable actions (I think). However, at LISO, I quickly learned that we would be awarded for following the rules and having a reliable device. After LISO, my partner (who was also a captain) dropped Mission, declaring that he wasn't that great at builds. I was confused, but I still moved on with my new partner, who was one of the newer freshmen. If I recall correctly, there was a 2-3 week gap between LISO and Yale. During this time, we didn't meet nearly enough and only got together to build about once a week. Most of our building was done in the week leading up to Yale, and we succeded in adding 2 more tasks. At Yale, I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the numbers 48 on Avogadro. I was confused, as 48 was the no-show score and we definitely did the event. Our checklist was also given back to us in our test packet. Later, when reviewing the raw scores, I was even more upset when I saw that we would have gotten 5th. At that point, I had so much stress from trying to build it that I was totally finished with Mission. So, I told the captains and they took me off. Later in the season, I was placed on mission again several times for the other team as a warm body. Eventually, when we got to states, the mission device that we used wasn't the one I started with. I was pretty relieved but also a little disappointed with the fact that I had sorta failed at that event. But, doing mission was still a great experience for me and I saw just how difficult build events were.

Write It Do It
My experience with WIDI was an interesting one. I was the do-er. Me and my partner practiced quite a lot, making random stuff out of mainly legos but also random pens and pencils. By the time we got to regionals, I was super nervous. It was my first scioly tournament ever, and I really had no idea what to expect. I don't think I was quite prepared for what I would get. Usually, during our practices, the description only took up about 1 page. This time, I think I had around 4 pages. I was also super stressed at the time, and by the time I left the room I was super frazzled. Everything was a jumble and I thought we weren't going to do well. We ended up getting 6th, which was my first ever scioly medal! When states rolled around, I was super nervous again. This time, the thing was made of knex. I remember getting really confused this time around, and I was really stressed out. We ended up getting 8th, which was disappointing but I was ok since I did well in thermo.

Indoor Bottle Rocket/Ping Pong Parachute
In NJ, the trial events for states aren't released until a pretty short amount of time before the tournament (I believe it was around 2-3 weeks prior). That year, I was supposed to do Experimental Design, but there was a conflict so my coach took me off. At the time, I only had two events, so he decided to give me IBR. Me and my partner spent some time building our two rockets, and it was one of the most fun experiences I had with scioly. Being a foolish little eighth grader, we never got a chance to test our rockets before states. We ended up never getting a chance to test it (or an air compressor), so we were really betting our luck on our design. When we got to states, our bottle rocket was great and it worked just the way we wanted it to. I think everyone was just super relieved at that point. The main lesson I learned from that was to always test your scioly devices.

Wright Stuff
I started doing WS after I stopped doing mission. At the Princeton invy, I got put on as a warm body. Since it wasn't one of my main events, I decided to trust the people who regularly did WS and got them to teach me the basics, the afternoon before our competition. The first time I did Wright Stuff also happened to be with one of the captains who was also a warm body. Being the little freshman, my job was to let him wind the motor on my hand and put the O-ring on the rear hook. Simple, right? Not so. The room that WS was held in was slightly tricky to deal with, especially as two people who didn't exactly know what they were doing. The plane didn't fly nearly as well as it did back at school, and I was disappointed. For the rest of the season, I warm bodied for both Penn and States. At Penn, I was the one launching the plane. I was nervous on a whole new level. However, my partner and I did something right, and we beat the other team by 11 places (we got 13th). I should also note that the builders only built one plane for the whole year. Which leads us to states. We had WS for the last session in the tournament. I was testing our plane one last time with my old partner from Penn, right before we went in to do our official flights. When it was landing, another kid managed to get the plane stuck between his legs, which messed up a lot of stuff that we had adjusted. Mentally, I was really screwed up, and of course, we didn't do well. We ended up getting 10th, which was honestly a surprise to me. I thought we had done a lot worse, but 10th was a lot above my expectations. It was only after states when I realized that the bag of materials we had also included the build instructions for the Freedom Flight Models kit. I also realized that the packet contained almost everything we needed to know to succeed, and that we definitely would have done better if we had just read it. I was frustrated that I hadn't seen it earlier, but there was nothing I could really do about it. Now, WS leaves me with a lot of anticipation on what we can do next year to do better.

=Other Hobbies= Marching Band - By far one of my favorites (besides scioly). I play Alto Sax. Given that marching band started well before the beginning of the year, I got to know a lot of my friends through marching band. There's also this weird thing about MB that feels really good. To stand on a football field, blowing your face off, is an experience unlike any other. The only downside is that it's a huge time commitment and I didn't get a chance to do as much scioly stuff as I should have.

Cooking - I really enjoy making food. Right now, my thing is sourdough. I really enjoy the whole process, and sourdough bread tastes worlds better than Wonder bread.

Watching YouTube - Frankly, I spend way too much time doing this. My favorite things to watch are Bon Appetit, Jeopardy!, and Gordon Ramsay. I also enjoy watching funny videos.

=Random Things About Me=
 * Favorite Food - I can think of so many foods I love, but I'd have to say my favorite food is Chili, just because it's so hearty and comforting.
 * Favorite quote - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
 * Favorite DCI Shows - Bluecoats 2014 - Tilt, Cadets 2011 - Between Angels and Demons, Blue Devils 2017 - Metamorph
 * Favorite class taken in school - AP Physics 1. Partly because of my teacher, but also because I find Physics so fascinating.