SO After High School

[Magikarpmaster629]

High school graduation is a long way away for me, but how does one get involved with SO after they graduate?

[Skink]

Fortunately, it's not rocket science. You talk to people or pull on connections you already have. It partially naturally depends on what you do and where you go after high school, but options include:
1. local schools (stipended, heavy investment roles like head coach to volunteer, lower investment roles)
-securing leadership roles is more challenging, naturally, but teams rarely turn away volunteers, at a minimum
-by the way, team planting if a school either never had a team or no longer has one may be challenging, but that process can be rewarding
2. local tournaments (director to event supervisor to simple warm body volunteer)
-and, really, you can work non-local tournaments if you like driving
3. State level business (this depends on the state...quickly gets above my head!)
4. dump your career's worth of notes on the Wiki for the next generation

Ultimately, unless you move to Montana (and, even then...), there will be some need wherever you go, I'd imagine. I can tell you that both Regional and State tournaments in MO are always in need of event supervisors, let alone competent ones! Locally, event supervisors range from team coaches to university students and faculty to Boeing folks to Science Center folks to other random community members. In other words, no matter who you are, provided you're interested, you'll be plugged in somewhere!

[chalker]

If you want to help out at tournaments, the best thing to do is to reach out to your state director via this website: http://soinc.org/state_websites and offer to help out. They'll point you in the right direction.

[sjwon3789]

Some may even get involved in their college and hold an invitational tournament. (I believe this is the case for Cornell and probably other ones as well)

[EastStroudsburg13]

First I'll mention that if you go on chat at any reasonable hour of the day, you will find someone qualified to answer this question, because most of the regulars are grads.

But essentially, what Skink said is the usual way to stay involved. I've helped judge at several tournaments, and even supervised a couple of times. Unfortunately, with my schedule, it's tough to devote a ton of time to it, but I stay involved as best I can. If you go to college somewhere that has a Science Olympiad Alumni group like MIT, Yale, or Cornell, you can also join that.

One other thing you can do is be a resource for your old team. If your team has a Facebook group or something similar, try to stay on there, and you can offer guidance there with your experience. This can be especially helpful for people who are replacing you in a particular event.

And of course, you're also free to stick around here! The reason I'm still here is I love the fact that there's a community full of people who also devote such a large component of their lives to Science Olympiad, and those are the kind of people I normally like associating with.

Also those administrative duties. But mostly the community!