Science Olympiad

Going into this year I had no idea that I would be joining the Westminster Science Olympiad team but, here I am.

Even though I did not know I was going to join, I was, in a way predestined to join. I am taking physics and chemistry back to back, both with Mr. Dahlman, and my friends are on the team, namely Brian Pohmeier (a three year veteran), who was intent on having me join. There was really no excuse for me not to join.

Now, being the new kid, I did not know what to expect going into this, and the first day I was quite bewildered by the prospect of having to study for something outside of school not related to a grade. Though I did not want to study, I kept at it and soon the invitational came. Our team medaled in 40 percent of the events, which is good because some of the schools started studying for this invitational in October.

Being new to the whole "taking a test as a way of competing" thing, I was kind of anxious, but when I saw the test was exactly what Daniel Lindberg and I studied, I was relieved. And because of my great effort, we placed second overall in that event. Furthermore I had originally had three events scheduled, but we could not get a fully-functioning robot built in the short time we had to prepare. So we decided to drop Robot Ramble as an event since we did not have a robot to enter.

After competing in the Helicopters event, which was my final event for the day, I found out that Anne Lehan was without a partner for Forensics. Guess who would go into the Forensics test without any prior knowledge or forewarning about Forensics? I mean it was basically the essence of going into a test completely unprepared. In the end, I tried my best and everything worked out.

Overall I would recommend Science Olympiad to anyone who wants to challenge their intellectual horizon and have fun doing it!

By Gregory T. Benson