Ruhi Week 11 - Practice Makes Perfect
Science Olympiad has been an essential part of my life for as long as I can remember. It started when I was in Kindergarten and my sister was participating in Elementary Science Olympiad in her fourth grade. Then four years later, I became old enough to join ESO myself and after years of watching my sister have weekly meetings to study for her events, I was finally able to do the same.
My first year participating, I had an abysmal performance, getting 28th out of 32 teams in one of my events (Estimania). After years of eagerly awaiting the moment when I could compete, getting such a bad placing was quite honestly humiliating for me. So, for the next year, I took the lessons I learned from fourth grade and practiced every single week for all of my events, tirelessly meeting with my partners and memorizing the content. Then on the day of, hoping I would at least be in the top half of the teams, I sat at the awards ceremony biding my time while the top six teams were announced. Finally, it was time for Estimania again. When I didn't hear my name in fifth and fourth place, I stopped listening because I knew there was no way I was in the top three. That was why when they announced the first place team, I didn't realize they had said my name until my team members pushed me to get up and get my medal. I went on to get three more medals and my team won first place overall. That competition was the first time I realized the power of practicing and spending more time than necessary to become a better version of myself.
This idea came back to me this year. This was my eighth year of doing Science Olympiad and I decided to branch out and try a new event called Experimental Design. Before our first competition of the season, I barely practiced for my events which resulted in me getting twenty-first place out of forty teams. By this time, I had become accustomed to getting top ten placings in every competition so this was extremely unexpected for me but I knew I had no one to blame but myself because I had not practiced as much as I should have.
For this reason, I spent the next two months mastering my section of the test and practicing tirelessly with my partners to ensure that we were all confident in our parts. The day of the final competition finally came this weekend, and I was hoping that I would get at least top ten. Once again, the awards ceremony came and this time I was eagerly listening for my name, knowing that the hard work I put into studying should come to fruition. When I received second place, all of my hopes were satisfied and I once again learned a valuable lesson that practice does indeed make perfect.
Hi Ruhi! I have also felt the massive influence that continuous practice can have on results, except for me it was in swimming rather than Science Olympiad. When I had originally joined the swim team in third grade, I was one of the slowest people on the team, unable to keep up with any of the sets that the coach gave out. However, as I kept working, going to five practices a week for every almost week of the year, I was able to work my way up the rankings. Now, although I'm certainly not winning any sort of awards for my times, the practice has allowed me to reach a point where I can look back and see how far I've come and feel a sense of pride at the work I put in. I also felt that same sense of astonishment towards the results I've achieved as during my freshman year, I dropped six seconds over the course of two days on my main event, as I had not swam it in a while. It made me realize that all the work I had put in had paid off, as six seconds is a massive amount of time to shave off of an event.
ReplyDeleteHi Ruhi! I myself can relate to your experience of seeing how consistent practice can lead to incredible amazing results. For me, it was robotics rather than science alone.. I started I was so confused and frustrated on my first few tournaments I placed last to second last in competitions. But when I got into better teams that were helpful and made me understand how the robot works and how to design me and my team's early performances became better spending countless hours refining a robot testing strategy I'm working with my teammates we really started to see real progress. One of my most satisfying moments was when we barely making eliminations in a local competition to actually place in state level tournaments. After my first year with that team we started Placing ourself on the podium and winning lots of awards by now we have won over 20 competitions and made it to worlds twice and we'll do the this year too. Your story about the science Olympiad really resonates with me because I have had similar movements of self doubt that turn me into moments of triumph through dedication and preservance. I really enjoyed reading your Blog, Can't wait to read more.
ReplyDeleteRuhi, I really like the way you structured this Blog Post as a chronological narrative. The way you open with your initial "abysmal performance" from fourth grade and describe how you improved from there is inspiring and gives your post a really powerful message, and then fast-forwarding to your eighth year of Science Olympiad―this year―creates a continuity between the lessons you learned both during your first competitions and during the new event you participated in. The value of practicing for important events is something I have had to learn as well, and when I see people succeed in competitions or any other activity that requires prior preparation, I often find myself wondering how much effort that person put into that performance. I congratulate you for your accomplishments and learnings in Science Olympiad and wish you luck if you continue to participate in the future!
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