Taylor--Fourth Place

Fourth Place 

In spring of my Junior year, I found myself walking onto the campus of UC Riverside with a bunch of sleep deprived Science Olympians. The day of our regional competition had finally arrived. The night before, the team spent most of their hours studying instead of sleeping, and the majority of us had less than two hours of rest. Before the competition began, everybody was trying to cram the last bits of information about their events into their brains or put the finishing touches on their buildings. Soon enough, it was time for my forensics event test.
At the beginning of the school year, I had no prior knowledge about forensics, except for trivial things learned from crime scene investigation shows on TV. The event covered a myriad of topics, and it seemed nearly impossible to learn everything. Every day, I spent hours after school taking notes, annotating textbooks and memorizing new material. After spending six months studying, my partner and I learned to do all kinds of things, such as how to distinguish powders and fibers using burn tests, find the angles at which blood spatters, and analyze crime scenes.
The testing period was about forty minutes, but the minutes felt like seconds as we frantically tried to match fingerprints and identify polymers. Nothing but the sound of shuffling papers and whispers filled the room. The most difficult part of the test was getting everything onto paper within the time limit. In an attempt to complete the test packet, we held the papers up in the air, so that we could write on both sides simultaneously, since they did not allow us to remove the staples. Unfortunately, we were not able to finish in time. I was filled with anguish as my partner and I left the room. I could not believe that all my efforts resulted in an incomplete test. It was as if our countless hours of work went to waste. I was exhausted and on the verge of giving up, but I had to pull through because within ten minutes, the test for my second event was going to start.
By the end of the day, I was out of energy, but relieved that the tests were over. I was able to meet up with my forensics partner for the awards ceremony, and I was anxious to know if we placed in the top six or not. The awards ceremony was in a big lecture room and it was filled to the brim with people. The announcer revealed the winners of the events in alphabetical order, so we sat in agony until he got to the letter “F”. My heart began to beat extremely fast and I had never felt butterflies in the stomach like I did at that moment. The speaker’s voice boomed, revealing sixth place, fifth place, and then he said, “Fourth place:

Etiwanda!”. That was us! My partner and I looked at each other with complete surprise. Maybe it was because we barely had any sleep or because we had poured our hearts into that test, but we were so overcome with happiness that we started to cry. Trying to hold back our tears, we stood up and walked down the steps to the front of the room to claim our medal. Almost everyone on our team won a medal that night and we placed second out of thirty some teams.
Even though my partner and I won fourth place, this was the first time that I had ever felt so proud of something I did. I realized that Science Olympiad was something that I cared a lot about. After investing so much time and energy into studying for this club, I learned that hard work does pay off. My experience at the competition has motivated me to be dedicated to the work that I do. It taught me that I am capable of putting in the effort necessary to reach my goals. Now that we are more familiar with Science Olympiad competitions, my partner and I are currently preparing to place higher this year in the forensics event at regionals.