Admiral, you wouldn't believe how close you were....
I have a giant portrait of Kramer hanging on my wall. If you're familiar with the shows, you'd recognize it as the oil painting he had done of himself.
OK, so i'm back.....I've mainly been in the same position as Admiral, only been able to read the thread, and not create the large responses that make these threads fun.
Anyway, this is what happened this weekend....
Sorry, there was no skiing done here. In fact almost all of the snow has melted. This weekend I went to Delaware for the Science Olympiad national invitiational. As I remeber Ed there were a few teams from California. So let me start off by saying that this wasn't a vacation, this was a competition, when you want to win so bad, the whole spectre of losingg badly haunts you. So after getting there on friday night after a 5 hour bus ride, we all got settled in, and studied long into the night. I couldn't even get on the internet, they had locked down all of our phone lines. Oh! the horror!
So, after we got alex, the senior valedvictorian, to take his nose out of his books so that we could turn pff the lights, we all gathered around and found out why HBO sucks.
So the next moring was the beginning of a very stressful day. I had only gotten 5 hours of sleep, and had not gotten much before, so my first duty was to go to the soda machine and purchase a coke. It was good.
The competition was on the campus of the university of delaware. Pretty nice campus but it seemed, if this is possible, "generically" nice, like they knew what people though of as nice, as faw as brick and green grass and trees, but it wasn't laid out in a way that was surprisingly pleasant, like princeton or harvard, but I didn't even expect that much anyway....
So i got through all of my events, which, as you can imagine, was a major release, and i went over to a small resaurant and ate some gnocci and focaccia bread, like those admiral?
So we went to this supposed "dinner", which just ended up being a way for the U of D to recoup its losses from supporting the competition, the same thing had happened the night before, except then it was even more blatant, they had us buy their concession food. Did we learn? <insert resounding "no">
So after that we went to the awards presentation, but before I get into that let me explain to you the position our team is in. We have never been to the national competition at the HS level, to get there you must first progress through regionals, then states, and finally to nationals. The top two finishers at states and regionals move up to the next level. Last year we finished in 7th place at states. This year, we have the best team ever, and we will problably not be as good next year. So, we want to take it all this year (just the states, nationals is only for fun at that point)
So anyway, this awards presetation was built specifically to kill me, really, i mean it. Even if the even wasn't mine, my heart would be jumping all around in my chest, just from the anxiety. So I won no medals....
I went in really wanting to win. And since im not scared of crowds, i really wanted to get on the stage, that seemed like more of an honor than the medal. I just wanted everyone to
see me.
So we won good amount of medals, but not a surprising amount, i think we expect more, but really our goals were way too high for a national competition, if anything wins the competition, its consistancy, not meadals. So they start calling up the top ten teams to come up to the front one by one. Everyone inside wants to believe that there is a chance left, but no one says it, they dont want to look like the person who can't face the facts. They've already called 10-7th place, i tell my friend next to me, if we dont come in 6th or 5th its over. 6th is called, everyone's head is hanging low now, we knew that we gave our best effort. They had called our arch-enemy school, Vestal. 5th place is called. It's us! Were all jumping up and screaming, i gave pigghy back ride to 5 different people in only about 100 feet, as we go up to the stage, we see Vestal returning, we are both happy for each other, and we are sincere, but we are also caught up in thr fat that we beat Vestal, who came in 2nd at State's last year, and our chances of success are real!
Now the other powerful NY team greece-arcadia who came in 3rd last year at states, had won a crapload of medals, we expected them to win, we took a team picture with our trophy while 4th and 3rd were up on stage, we sit down, again, were all hoping. 2nd isn't greece (no not the country). 1st is the only one who hadn't been called yet, it was all or nothing for them. And it wasn't them! are already euphoric outlooks had just gotten even brighter, were were the number one school from the state here!
We were all very pround, an we went out to get ice crea,. This was a great motovator for the team, we no longer feel like we are accelerating torwards a brick wall, there is a chance that at the end of state, we may not crash.
So thats what happened on my weekend, sorry it took me so long, but i wanted to detail it in all of its full dramatic glory.
So no, i didn't go skiing, but im going to have to recant my earlier statement about there being no snow, there was enough of it to cancel school today.
