Maths has always been my favourite subject, and the one I have dedicated the most time to. But when opportunities arise for Olympiads in other subjects, I always take them up and see how far I can get. At the very least, they are almost always an enjoyable way to spend a couple hours.
I sat the Chemistry Olympiad for the first time in Lower Sixth. Given that I hadn’t learnt much of the required content (it’s aimed at Upper Sixths), I approached it with a laid-back attitude – “let’s see how far we can take this.” My score earned me a Gold – good for a Lower Sixth, but not particularly noteworthy in the grand scheme of things. Later, I sat the Lower Sixth Chemistry Challenge, an unrelated Chemistry challenge paper and was among the top 70, so I got to head off for a weekend residential camp in Cambridge that summer.
The British Physics Olympiad offers a raft of challenges aimed at different year groups: among them, the Intermediate Physics Challenge to Year 11 and the Senior Physics Challenge to Lower Sixth. I sat both papers and both times was pleasantly surprised to find myself in the top seven nationally, so I got to head into London for a nice awards ceremony along with other Physics students. In Lower Sixth, I asked to sit the main Olympiad a year early and also achieved Gold.
Going into Upper Sixth, I knew this would of course be my final year of Olympiads and I hoped to use my experience to perform as well as I possibly could. First in November was Round 1 of the Physics Olympiad and I found out that I had qualified for Round 2, already an improvement on last year. Then came the Chemistry Olympiad, and I got a score which I hoped might be just within the range that qualified me for a training camp – it was and I readily accepted. Having sat the two Physics Round 2 papers (they have both vanilla Physics and Astrophysics), I was pleasantly surprised to score double Gold and get invited to Physics training camp as well.
In a tragic twist of fate, I came to realise that the final two days of Physics Camp clashed with Chemistry camp and so I would have to pick only one of them to attend. I have always had a particular soft spot for Chemistry and so, after some deliberation, as well as thinking back to my previous camp experience and the awesome practical work we did, I finally decided to pick Chemistry camp and sadly reject my Physics offer. It will be great to have a brief Chemistry-focused break from what will otherwise be a Maths-dominated Easter!
Many thanks to Dr Hobbs and Mr Knight, without whom none of these opportunities would be available. Thanks also to my other Physics and Chemistry teachers Mr Letts, Mr Allison, Mr Shi, Dr Chapman and Miss Pindoria.
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