The Extracurricular Newsletter

Issue 2:

There’s nothing that makes a Science Olympiad team member more nervous than the awards ceremony.

            Fifty-nine teams filed into the auditorium of Kellenberg Memorial High School on Saturday, February 27, after they had braved the anxiety of taking a 150-question Anatomy and Physiology exam, attempting to reconstruct the impossibly intricate Write It/Do It structure from rushed and inaccurate directions, and battling someone else’s small robot in Sumobots. It had been a long, science-filled, stressful, and altogether fun day. But the awards ceremony would be what would determine whether all the work had been worth it.

            The Roslyn team, decked out in blue jeans and white T-shirts, took up two full rows of seats in the back of the middle section of the Kellenberg auditorium. We cheered whenever we saw our teammates on the big projector screen in the famed Science Olympiad montage of videos taken throughout the day. With logic befitting a group of young scientists, we debated about which teams we thought would make it to the state competition. We tried to pass the time before the moment of truth.

            As soon as the montage ended and the lights of the auditorium were turned on, we Roslynites collectively took a deep breath and fidgeted nervously. Were we going to States? Did we get any medals? How did we do? We had worked so hard to do well in our events; we wanted to see that hard work translate into a shiny medal and a ticket to the state Science Olympiad competition.

            Some of us gripped each other’s hands as the top five scorers in our events were called. Some of us remained quiet and introspective, replaying our events in our minds to figure out what we had done wrong or right. But when any of our teammates were called to the stage to receive a medal, we forgot about our nervousness and shouted at the top of our lungs. Even those who did not win medals were elated for those who did. We were a team, after all, and we all wanted to go to States together. All of us, a mass of white and blue and team spirit, were Roslyn.

            In fact, our hard work did pay off. Roslyn placed ninth overall, missing the cutoff for States by a mere three points. It was our best performance in years! Congratulations to Alex Wu, Michael Lustrin, and Brian Chen for placing second in Experimental Design; Scott Gladstone, Gabe Ruttner, and Anouva Kalra-Lall for placing first in Experimental Design; Aaron Kersch and Tony Gu for placing third in Sumobots and second in Mousetrap Vehicle; and Olivia Conetta, Sam Halpern, and Scott Gladstone for placing fifth in Picture This. Go Roslyn Science Olympiad! May the best nerd win!

 

Issue 1:

 
            Question: What do you get when you put 54 science-loving students in one room? Answer: Science Olympiad!
            Every Thursday, if you pass through the downstairs science hallway and peer into room 131, you’ll see a huge group of scientifically-inclined students conversing passionately about scientific topics as diverse as protein modeling, astronomy, and how best to build a mousetrap vehicle. Although we’re all working on different events and immersing ourselves in different scientific topics for our competition in February, we’re all united by one common goal: to win.
            We’re off to a good start to the year in Science Olympiad, affectionately called Sci Oly. We kicked off the year with an election for two associate officers to the executive board. Junior Gabe Ruttner and senior Olivia Conetta won the most votes and are now the newest additions to the leadership of Sci Oly, joining Scott Gladstone, Samantha Halpern, Anouva Kalra-Lall, Kate Kerpen, Nikhil Mehandru, and Danny Pollack. Congratulations! With their help, Sci Oly will be on the trajectory for glory in February.
            At our next meeting, we went shopping. What? Shopping? In a science club? No, not that kind of shopping! All of the student officers, each of whom takes on a different set of events and specialties, stationed themselves around the room and advertised their events. Team members moved from officer to office, deciding which areas of science interested them enough for them to pursue events in those areas. The fact that our team members were spread out at all the different stations instead of at just one attests to the wide range of interests we all have – an essential part of the recipe for an exceptional team.
            And now that we’ve assigned our team members the events they shopped for, we can get the show on the road and start preparing for February’s competition! The other schools in the division won’t know what hit them when Roslyn Sci Oly steamrolls the competition.

 

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Late Update on August 24, 2011 at 11:05 a.m.