Intel Science Talent Search

I was in quite a shock when at the beginning of 9th period today, after I had filled an excruciatingly boring 8th period with the statistics take-home due tomorrow, someone said to me, “Yingna, congratulations!” I was confused, and replied with the obvious, “Huh? What?” and my puzzled face. Michelle said, with her own surprised features, “You don’t know? You’re semi-finalist in Intel!”

I clapped one hand over my mouth and numbly replied, “Oh my god. Oh my god. I can’t believe it. Oh my god!”

I don’t think anyone could doubt the surprise, which had pushed joy aside. The full meaning of the words didn’t hit me yet, and I was just thinking: Oh wow! I can’t believe it! After all, as Michelle said, “What’s really amazing is that you changed your project! You only had two months to write your paper!”

Yup, that was true. I had ventured into two laboratories before, but was turned away from both due to funding issues. At one lab, I did learn culturing cells and western blotting, but when senior year came and it was time to enter my lab data into competitions, funding issues seemed to have prompted my departure from the lab. Left project-less, I felt uneasy and nervous–all the competitions that my sister had entered and won with her finalist or semi-finalist status, I wouldn’t be able to enter them!

In hopes of just being able to pull together a project, so I wouldn’t have to drop science research, I picked up the scientific study that I had started to conduct independently in 9th grade. It was my research on mosquitoes–barely a research project at that point. I had done hardly any literature reviews and all I had were my 9th grade writings that told more of a story than an actual scientific paper. I had looked over mosquito articles here and there over the years–whatever caught my eye–but I didn’t have too much time since I was doing lab work. But, given the chance to pick up the project again, I continued and I’m glad I did.

I’m just still surprised at this news. I entered the science research room after school, hugging both my teachers, both congratulating me, and I congratulated others who had won the same honor. This year was great–six semi-finalists for the Intel Science Talent Search came from our school! Six out of three-hundred in the nation!

More competitions are coming up, and with this motivating me, I hope I can push my research even further to become better.