Saturday 18 October 2014

September: Listverse, Open Night, Science Olympiad, Misc

Why can't I blog about just one topic? Oh well, I don't care. This blog is meant to be relaxing, I have other things to worry about.

SO, what I've been up to. I'll start with the quickest things.

On October 10th (just over a week ago) I got my second article published on Listverse. Here it is, title changed by them but it's cool, right? Also, there are atheists and christians and Democrats and Republicans arguing in the comments so that's something. It's about ridiculous school policies, and in researching for that article I was a little disheartened by parts of humanity, I must say. Also, I don't think I posted the link to my other Listverse article, so that's "10 Bizarre Cases of Hospital Addiction" and you should totally click on it to make me happy. I'm not coercing you at all, I swear.

Open Night! This'll be a fun topic. Last Wednesday, my school had its biannual Open Night, where the school prepares all sorts of fancy stuff and then invites all the eleven- and twelve-year-olds (aka prospective incoming first years) to try it out. I'm a Fifth Year, as I've said, so this was my last Open Night. Which is sad. It is. Open Night fills me with school spirit and I love my school, so I really enjoy it. On Wednesday I was in the Choir and Ukulele Orchestra (we did two shows for the parents) and also manning the Young Scientist stand with the other Young Scientist from last year. It got a bit boring, especially after everyone moved away from the Main Hall (where the Young Scientist stand was) and I still had to stay there making sure no one stole the trophies (I really should've got a picture of them all together, but sadly I do not possess the foresight for that kind of thing).

A letter arrived for me week before last inviting me to the National Trials of the Science Olympiad for another year. Again, lack of foresight means I don't have a picture of the letter which would've been nice, but whatever. After much angst I chose to study Biology and the exam will be in two weeks. The likelihood of me succeeding and being chosen to represent Ireland in Austria is exceedingly low, particularly with the rampant cheating (based on what I saw last year), but I'm giving it a go anyway as I am unable to resist opportunity. It's becoming a problem.

Sadly this means I can't go to the CTYI Hallowe'en Reunion, or really celebrate on Hallowe'en night because I need to well-rested.

I'm not sure if I mentioned that I joined the school Chess club, but I did, and at the moment I am utterly terrible at chess, but I'm working on it and I think it's healthy to accept being bad at something and then learning from your mistakes. Would be a lot easier if my sister would stop teasing me about it though....

I've kept up Duolingo, I think my streak is practically unbroken so that's good. Vocabulary.com I go on occasionally, and Codecademy I've been stuck on this one problem for ages so I can't move past it and thus I just avoid it.

I'm really enjoying Maths class at the moment because while it's hard, it's never boring. But this particular part of the Complex Numbers chapter is ... unpleasant. Here's a photo of one sum. Ouch.

No comments:

Post a Comment