National Science Challenge

Its the NSC season again, and guess what, we sec 3s have taken up the burden of bringing the NSC trophy back to RI for the umpteenth time running (sorry rgs). And our journey has begun.

The members of this year's NSC team are Matthew, Hong En, Zi Yang, Kewei, and myself, as determined by an internal selection test. Well, I must say that I am certainly a little surprised to be in this completely ownage and imba team. I mean, I was only in one science RA (excluding math) and I wasnt really good in Bio RA for that matter. I mean, compared to matthew and hong en (bio-chem ra), kewei (bio-phy ra), and last but not least Mr-SMO-No.1 Kang Zi Yang, i am really a nobody. Thats not the point though, cause I got selected =).

So in May, we had this qualifying round, comprising of an impromptu presentation round and a pen-and-paper round, and we did not disappoint, sailing through to the quaters. And thats where the journey really began.

This years NSC comprises of three rounds, a puzzle solving round (three questions worth 9 points altogether), a presentation round (12 points, plus an additional 2 points for a judges question), and finally, the awesome buzzer round.

What we essentially had to prepare for the quarter finals was the presentation, on the topic 'What do the polar regions tell us about climate change'. There was a visit to the science centre's exhibit (we were getting quite familiar with the science centre by now), along with the three other schools in our quarterfinal group, to prepare for this presentation. And then it was just research, and making props. It sounds easy, but trust me, it wasnt.

'Why?' you may ask, and my answer would be as follows:

1) We had to really impress the judges, which meant a creative script, colourful props, and of course, fluency, which arent that easy to achieve.

2) As if that wasnt bad enough, the schools in our group were RGS, NYGH, Commonwealth Seconday. So as you can see, there is a lot of pressure (only the top 2 schools in each group get into the semis, and we were taking no chances).

After 2 weeks of blood, sweat, and toil, we finally came up with a good presentation, which matty, hong en, and zi yang, were presenting on tv. They also had the task of owning rounds 1 and 3, to make us look good XD

Competition day came, and the questions were really quite tough. I mean, for round 1, 2 schools got 3/9, and 2 schools scored 0. And the buzzer round score was really quite pathetic. Yet it didnt matter. It was tough for everyone, and we pulled through, even though going into round 3, we were tied with 2 schools, and nygh was leading by 1 point. So final score: RI 20, RGS 16, NYGH 14, CSS 12. =)

So we have cleared our first hurdle, but thats not enough. We are into the semis, but its not enough. Will it be semis now, champions later? We shall just have to overcome our obstacles one at a time, but in the meantime, we all know deep down that we wont be satisfied with anything other than number one, and anything other than those funky laptop up for grabs.

So laptops, here we come! =)