The Epitome of Nerdiness

History Day
Today was the District History Day Competition. If you place as top three in any event at Districts, you qualify for state, and if you place top two at state, you qualify for nationals. There were many different categories: website, exhibit, historical paper, documentary, and performance. I chose to do a historical paper (Ally calls it a "nerd-pants-paper") based off of the topic "Elizabeth Blackwell: Opening the doors of the medical field for women". This competition is for 8th graders, 10th graders, and 12th graders, so Rudy was competing today as well. He did a group exhibit based off of John Deere. His exhibit was actually pretty nifty, he had little toy tractors there and everything. I'm pretty proud of my little twerp. These projects were started at the beginning of the school year and have been an ongoing progress throughout the entire year. At the competition, 3-4 judges ask you various questions about your project, the interview. You are also scored off of your project in general, but most of your score comes from your interview.

My interview was at 9:30 this morning at the Peru State College library. The room was so cool. It was this isolated faculty study center that over-looked the entire library. There was no staircase to get up there, you could only get there by elevator. I was the first historical paper interview of the day, so when I showed up, the judges were talking amongst themselves. They explained to me that I was seven minutes early (Believe it or not, I was early! That never happens!), so I would have to wait because they were not allowed to start ahead of time. They had an "official timer person" there and everything. I took a seat, but then soon realized that I would have to cross my legs because I was wearing a pencil skirt. Unfortunately, my legs were very sore (along with the rest of my body) from the first two track practices. So I set my nerd-pants-paper on the chair next to me, and casually used my hands to lift my leg, grimacing in pain the entire time. Those were the most uncomfortable 7 minutes of my life. The judges were all talking about how they never use their cell phones and about how they hate what America has become. It was rather entertaining actually. By the end of the 7 minutes I was able to conclude that all 3 judges were rather conservative republicans, but the timer-person was most definitely a democrat. (I blame my parents for this strange ability to discover a person's political party. In their exact words, "We don't want you to go off to college and become a democrat or anything.") Finally the timer-person called me over to the table. Rather than them trying to hash out how to pronounce my name, I just introduced myself. They each had a copy of my report in front of them that they had already read through and graded, and then the questions began. I thought that I would struggle with talking to these judges, but it came easily. As much as I am criticized for my over-bubbly personality, (cough... Sydni, Evan, and Elijah.... cough) it came in pretty handy today. The judges were very kind and their questions were rather simple considering that none of them had studied about Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. When they were done with their questions, I thanked them, shaking their hands, and then turned to walk out of the room. I was just about to the door when I heard, "Uh, Ms. Stofer". I turned around the older male judge was looking at me, "Yes?". "I wish you luck pursuing your medical career, I presume you will not endure the same hardships that Dr. Blackwell did, but good luck anyway." I smiled and said, "Thank you." Outside the door was the next competitor, who happened to be in my class. He looked really nervous, so I smiled at him and said, "The judges are very nice and friendly. Just make sure to be polite, go get 'em!" This seemed to calm his nerves a little bit, but the poor guy wouldn't stop fidgeting. His tie was all messed up; I thought about fixing it, but that would have been just a little strange, so I just walked away.

The awards ceremony was later in the afternoon. To be completely honest, at that point I didn't care if I made it to state or not because State History Day is the same day as District Music Contest for solos and small groups, so I would have ended up choosing DMC over state anyway. My paper did not place; I was a little upset at first, but I soon got over it. I found out after the ceremony that Rudy's John Deere exhibit advanced into finals, but he did not place either. I am really proud of him. There were 49 entries in his division, and only 12 advanced to the finals. We left the Peru campus and returned to school just in time for me to head to track practice. Thankfully, it was an easy day. All we did was lift weights for an hour and a half, and then work on shot-put foot work for another hour.

Nerdiness in Track
Tuesday all of us throwers were forced to run sprints on the track (that was covered in snow!). My mind tends to wander a lot when I run, so in these situations, when I am running short distance sprints, I have to have my mind occupied with something structured. As I was sprinting down the back straightaway, in my head I was subdividing "1234, 1&2&3&4&, 1-pl-et 2-pl-et 3-pl-et 4-pl-et, 1e&a 2e&a 3e&a 4e&a". The next sprint, I was thinking about the cosine, sine, and tangent rules, "SOH-CAH-TOA. Sine=opposite over hypotenuse. Cosine=adjacent over hypotenuse. Tangent=opposite over adjacent." On the next sprint I kept repeating the quadratic formula over and over again in my head. Sometimes I wonder what would constantly run through my brain if I wasn't so nerdy.

On the topic of track, I am so sore! Some idiot decided that throwers needed to do speed and  agility training. Really? Why can't we just lift weights, throw, and work on foot-work like all of the other schools make their throwers do? Surprisingly, I am in better shape than I thought I would be, which is good considering I haven't been very physically active since softball season got over in October. Despite the unwanted speed and agility training, I am pretty excited for this season! I'm hoping to break 30 feet in shot-put! It's a long shot, but we'll see what happens!