What a week!

Well, this week started off quite well. I had all my new classes, and I found out that I will have considerably more homework this trimester than I did last trimester, though my schedule did not change much. However, the two classes that are different this trimester, Human Biology in Place of AP Biology II and Advanced Chemistry in place of Keyboarding I, produce most of the honework load.

While AP Biology II may seem like it would be a challenging class, the challenge ended up being in the concepts which I already understood to some extent before entering the class, not in the homework. Human Biology will not be incredibly difficult, but there is considerably more homework. For one, there are diagrams that we need to color (with either colored pencils or marker), and for another, there a study guides that need to be completed each unit. As well, there are more labs, and more memorization required in Human Biology.

Advanced Chemistry, which is actually contains every part of UW-Oshkosh's General Chemistry class as well as some extra material, is understandably more difficult than Keyboarding I, which had no work outside of class. In Chemistry, there are homework assignments almost every night, as well as labs and quizzes that run past class time. Today we had our first set of quizzes, the Chapter 1 quiz as well as the Safty Masterquiz. School normally gets out at 3:10. We started these quizzes at 3:05. I was finished at 3:30 and subsequently missed my bus. Though Advanced Chemistry is undoubtably my most difficult class this trimester, I think that I will enjoy it the most.

Beyond a new set of classes this week, I had a string of activities. They started Monday night with the last math meet of the season. I knew that I just had to do fairly well to get a place on the All League Team of the Fox Valley Math League. This is chosen by ranking the top 8 students (regardless of grade level) by the combined score of their top four meet results. Students who attend all five meets have a buffer score, which I did not have since I missed the first meet. The Second Team All League takes the next 5 of each grade division (senior, junior, and freshman/sophomore). All of those who are on the All League Team recieve plaques, while those on the Second Team All League recieve much smaller silver medals. I have been a part of the Second Team All League for the past two years.

At the meet I scored 31 out of 40, which tied me for first place for the senior division. The top score overall was a 38 by Nick Wage and Yichen Hu. This meant that my total score from my top four meet scores was tied with Eric Heywood, a fellow teammate from Neenah at 119. We both were on the All League Team. This success set contrast to my performances at the Solo and Ensemble competition on Saturday.

The next day at 7:00 in the morning, I took the AIME math contest. It is given out to those who score high enough on the AMC test, which is given out earlier in the school year. It consists of 15 questions that are multiple choice. However, the catch is that there are 1000 choices for every problem and they are every integer between 000 and 999. I had taken the AIME test my sophomore year, and I did fairly poorly. However, that year I had taken the AMC 10 test (the one that can be taken by anyone in 10th grade or lower) and scored the highest in the state, so I won a plaque anyway.

This year, I felt that I did much better. I weas able to solve most of the problems within the three hour time limit, but I was forced to guess on about three of them. After taking the test, I recieved a book of math riddles called Hexaflexagons and Other Mathematical Diversions, which was the prize given out to the top scorer of the MAA math competition at each school.

Wednesday was perhaps the most interesting of the days this week. Last month, I was chosen to participate in the FVA South Honors Band, which was created this year by the band teachers from Oshkosh West, Oshkosh North, Neenah, and Menasha High Schools. Each of the teachers selected 15-30 of their best music students from each band to form the FVA South Honors Band. We received our music on Monday in Symphonic Band class and spent the class sightreading, as we also did on Tuesday. On Wednesday, however, we spent the day rehearsing at UW-Oshkosh under the direction of Dr. McWilliams, the director there. Here is our schedule:

8:00.......Arrival
8:30.......Full Band Rehearsal
9:30.......Break
9:45.......Full Band Rehearsal
11:10.....Break
11:30.....Master Class divided by section (mine was with Dr. Atwell, the Horn professor)
12:30.....Lunch
1:45.......Full Band Rehearsal
2:45.......Break
3:00......Full Band Rehearsal
4:00......End of Rehearsal

So, I was in rehearsal for over four hours as well as a one hour horn class. It was definitely fun and I loved the pieces of music that we played; they were much better than those that we tend to play in band class. But these rehearsals were held for a reason: we had a concert at 8:00 that very night. Amazingly, after only three days of having the music, the concert came off better than a normal band concert, for which we normally have more than a month to prepare.

On Thursday, I had a meeting for our Science Olympiad Competition at UW-Stout on April 2. I have signed up for five events: Astronomy, Forestry, Chem Lab, Physics Lab, and Chemical ID. I also started working on a tower for the tower building events. I finished the base of the tower and got some of the glue stuck to my hand, which I removed using ascetone and alcohol at home.

That brings me to today, which was for the most part, a normal day, except for the quizzes in Chemistry class. I finally have some free time to write this entry for my blog and to relax a bit after a long, fun week.