This post is going to be a bit shorter because it’s daylight savings tomorrow and I need to get to bed soon, but like posts before, I’m never going to fully be able to convey the excitement of Finals Week. Not just because so much happens here that I can’t fit it in a 500-1,000 blog post, but because Finals Week is such a unique and thrilling experience that it cannot be conveyed fully in words.
I slept the best I had in days and woke up around 8:00 for breakfast in the morning. Again, the food was amazing. The judging interviews started earlier than usual, so after I ate I talked to people for a bit before stepping outside of the ballroom (where we eat) to get mentally ready for judging interviews. I had interviews until about 3 pm today. Like yesterday, I won’t going to talk about what happened during the judging interviews because they are supposed to be confidential, but I felt like today went a bit better than yesterday.
Between judging interviews, I tried some new activities out in the finals lounge. For example, I played Smash for the first time with Chloe and had a blast. I also continued my routine of solving every single scrambled Rubik’s cube I found lying around — whether that be in the finalist lounge or the judging waiting room.
After judging interviews were over, we decided who were going to nominate for the Seaborg speaker. It is named after Glenn Seaborg, a Nobel Laureate in chemistry that used to be the head judge for STS. About half a dozen people were nominated to be the speaker, including me. My speech wasn’t very prepared because I was spending most of my energy on preparing for judging, so I got eliminated after the first round of voting. After the second round of voting, Akilan was decided to be the speaker, which made sense since he was one of the most outgoing finalists during the first two days.
We went to a table tennis place for dinner. On the walk there I talked to Charlotte and Ashley about issues with the education system and how intelligence is measured. When we arrived, we had a quick dinner before starting the table tennis tournament. I actually used to play tennis, but I hadn’t practiced for over a year (I’m still a beginner too) so I couldn’t transfer any of those skills to table tennis. Still, Chloe and I managed to win the first game of the tournament, mostly because we were lucky and got to serve first. While we were eliminated in the second round, we stayed around to watch and see how the other teams did. In the end, Akilan and Vishwum won the tournament and earned an STS blanket along with gold paddles.
After we returned to the hotel, we finally got to see the booths for Public Day tomorrow, when, as you guessed, we would be presenting our projects to the public! I went to the gym and ran a mile then went back to my hotel room to get ready for bed and write this blog post. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post!
