My journey in Chemistry

Since 10th grade I was interested in Chemistry. I always liked the concepts and themes of Chemistry and i always seen myself as being quite good at it. Yet I had never had a chance to participate in any kind of competition or olympiad and it was unsettling for me. Hence, at the start of my second IB year I decided to participate in the national Chemistry Olympiad and try my luck.
At the start of the year I was kind of distracted because I couldn't study anything efficient. I didn't know exactly what to learn and how. Fortunetly, my teacher helped me to lay first steps and I was one the right track of preparation. I started studying different branches of Chemistry in advanced level compared to the school syllabus. This was great and at the same time it was horrifying because it was really hard to understand most of the concepts and material. For example. when I started reading my Organic Chemistry textbook, it took a few weeks for me to complete a single chapter when now it is sufficient to study for a day to have the same result. This starting step was one of the most hardest things I had to pull myself through in my life. However, after 3-4 months, when the regional step of olympiad was close, I started to see the subject in different eyes and I managed too become actually good at it.
The regional step took place in January 13th and suprisigly I won 1st place and clinched a spot in the national competition in which I won 2nd place. After these two winnings my self-esteem boosted and I finally saw myself as being able to not only learn but apply my skills and actually win competition.
When I placed 2nd in national Olympiad I had a chance to be a part of the team that participates in the International Chemistry Olympiad (ICHO) and to be a part of it, we had to participate in another olympiad ( Baltic Chemistry Olympiad) and if I had placed there as atleast 4th student from my country, I would be a part of it. Luckily, I was 3rd from my country in the baltic competition and now I can safely say that I will be a participant of ICHO.
I never imagined that this kind of progress is possible in one year but my determination had made this possible and because of this rare opportunity to represent my country in an international event, I will try my best to be as good as possible.

New experience of being a part of an ensemble

I have been playing french horn for quite a while now and throughout my playing years I had participated and played in a lot of different stages and settings. I played solo, as a part of symphonic and wind orchestras. All these concerts and participations had helped me to develop my weak abilities that are needed for a good musician. Through solo playing I learned hwo to defeat stage fright and when I played in orchestras I learned to listen and quickly track what is happening around me and when I need to play. However, I had a realization recently, that only solo and orchestral playing wasn't enough. The development of the mentioned abilities was seen, but not enough for my needs. I could play alone yet there were still some problems in concentration while playing and even though I played together with an orchestra, I didn't seem to me that everyone was listening each other and playing together, while I wanted to learn to communciate with other musician while playing. As I said, these problems were highlighted recently, when I was offered to become a part of a wind quintet.
Wind quintet is a really interesting type of an ensemble and it is also one of the more popular types of ensembles. Wind quintet consist of 5 musician who play flute, oboe, clarinet, fagot and horn. The repertoire is mostly classical music but the pieces are often really nice and fun to play. I started playing in quintet at the start of 2016 and to this day it has been my 4 month as a part of it. The members of the ensemble are also students of the same music school I study at.
The best thing about this type of ensembles is that you need to work as a one if you want to sound good. Everyone needs to listen to others and adjust his tone and sound. It is really complex to play in a quintet and its solely because of this reason. When you play solo you are not concerned with others and the ones who accompany you needs to follow you and when you play in orchestra it would seem that it would be the same acase as quintet yet everyone really just looks at the conductor and plays their part. In either cases you are playing solely and when I had this transition to quintet it was extremely hard to sense and listen others. Most of the times I was out of tune, too loud, playing wrong notes and in the wrong time. It wasn't frustrating to try to play but certainly hard. After a few weeks of practises (we are practising every friday and saturday and we have extra before an important events) I started to finally listen to others and we were starting to play really well. This experience was really beneficial to me since I finally had a chance to develop skills that were crucial for me. Also, I improved my teamwork skills and noticed a few weaknesses of my own that I can now improve.
We also had a chance to participate in ensemble competition "Muzikines akvareles" this may and I am glad to say that we won the Gran Prix price as the best performing ensemble of the competition. It is always perferct to win something after the hard work that was put in,

My experience in "Mokslo Sriuba"

At the start of my second year, I enrolled in a great organization called "Mokslo Sriuba" and I decided now, to reflect my experiences during almost one year of volunteering.
"Mokslo Sriuba" is an organization that creates videos for the purpose to popularize science in our country;s community. These videos are broadcasted in the national channel and also posted on youtube. Video topics' range from analysis of modern food to quantum computing. Also, one of the main aims of the videos is to present complex scientific information as understandable for an ordinary person as possible.
My participation in creating these videos started from the newsletter of an organization that shares volunteering opurtunities. I needed a glance at "Mokslo Sriuba" advertisement to be hooked and immeadiatelly I contacted them to begin working.
The team I was a part of was called "script writting team". The name directly implies the work I had done. We would get a new idea for the video and our task was to find factual information, which in turn would become a coherent video text. Besides our team, there are montage team, advertisement team, project team and many more.
The experience I got from this year was unbelievable since not only I had a chance to investigate quite a few topics but also I am quite lucky that I got quite a few opurtunities to get valuable experience in other areas also since people in our organization organizes quite a few activities. During the year there were countless game nights, movie nights, presentations about various themes, trips, excursions and many more activites. Also, we make quite a lot of interviews for the videos. Hence, there were many chances to meet and talk with many great scientists, professors and profesionals.
As I am thinking about my personal experience in this journey, I realized that it was quite unusual and strange for me to work in such a project. I was paranoid that the work I do is worthless and it was really hard to find information and write scripts. Yet, the people in my team helped me a lot to progress and I am glad to say that I grew a lot during the year. Not only I gained skills for producing videos, I had developed in other ways also. I learned to communicate much better with the team. Also, I definetly developed new skills from various experiences. Moreover, I had to develop a great sense of responsibility, since If I would not done the work I supposed to do, other people would have to do much more work themselves. There were countless times that I wanted to stop and rest since the process was too hard, yet I never stopped since I always thought about other people. I am proud of myself but also thankful to this great organzation that provided the resources for my own development.

Charades tournament

During the past month I had a great pleasure to participate in a school held Charades tournament. The start of this great adventure was quite unexpected yet I am glad that I had a chance to participate.

One month ago few of my friends saw a poster about this charade tournament and our group of friends decided to participate in it. After only a week we started to compete with other teams and everythin went splendidly. A few of my friends had experience in Charades and taught everyone the key things to understand and remember. At the start, it was hard for me to keep up with the pace of this word guessing game but as the tournament progressed it was easier and easier every time.

It happened, that we were placed first in this tournament and it was a great suprise after all the perfect experience I had from it. I certainly find a new activity that I would not believe to be as entertaining as it is.

Learning to shoot the bow is hard

I am glad that my classmates are so active and they are one of the reasons why I am active too. My classmate Delija has proposed that we join her in a bow shooting practice and learn to do it ourselves. I had wanted to do some sport’s activity for a while, thus I accepted her proposal and joined other classmates in this great introductory to archery.

                We went to the archery club Delija is going to, where we met her coaches and other students that are having practice at the same time. One of the coaches has explained to us all the basics of the right way to shoot the bow and gave us the equipment and we started our practice. For me it was really hard at the start and there was one compromise that made even harder. Since it’s indoors club (well of course it is, it is winter right now), the ceiling height is low and when you look at the track to the shooting target, as closer you get to the target, the height decreases. Since, I am a quite tall person and the tallest from my group I had the longest bow that was chosen to match my height (somehow the bows length is proportional to the person’s height and arm length). We were beginners and everyone went really close near the target, something like 5-6 meters near, so that they could actually hit something. It wasn’t the case for me since my height and the length of the bow meant that it was too narrow for me to shoot from that place, since I couldn’t extend my arm fully without hitting the ceiling. For that reason, I was shooting twice as far as others from the line that people who do this sport professionally shoot from. You could even imagine that my shoots were so off the target. However, after a few tries I tried to really focus and progressed a little. I learned that my accuracy could be off most of the times but if I really try, then I would actually hit the target. When I actually hit the center that one time, I couldn’t believe myself, but it was only for once. Too bad for me, but I liked the challenge. It really made me try my best and that’s why I learned something new and even developed some accuracy.

                This activity was great and everyone should try this. When you shoot the bow you feel really great and it just look badass. I will somehow try to organize a second practice and I hope that I will succeed.

Trying new activities: mind games!!!

                At the end of the last week, my friend offered me to participate in a competition called “Auksinis Protas” and I was quite interested about it. It can be translated as “Golden mind” and I thought that it will be like a competition between teams who answers tricky organizers questions. I quickly answered “Yes!” to my friend since CAS thought me to try anything new and exciting, and I am glad that I made the decision to participate in this activity.

                The whole competition was really fun and quite new for me. There were 5 rounds and on each round there were different tasks for every team. On the starting 2 rounds we were answering questions about a set theme in every round. Those questions were really tricky and I was amazed that other could answer them. I tried my best and focused, however I was able to answer only a few of the questions on my own. Next, on the third round there was a lighting round. There were 20 questions with 4 anwser showed and we needed to choose the right one. This round was easier for me, but still the fast pace was quite challenging, since you had 30 sec to write an answer and half of those 30 sec you actually read the question, thus I tried me best to keep up with time. The fourth round was a music one. There were 10 questions and they all relate to some song or track played and you need either to know the answer through your knowledge or find some clues in the song that would help you to answer. These questions were so interesting and creative. It’s amazing to think that somebody created them, since they were like a piece of art and also because of the originality they were the hardest ones. The final round was as same as the 2 first ones and it was really the most intense one, since at the end, when you still can do something for your score, you try your hardest to answer correctly.

                We finished 14^th between 25 teams, and I would say that a great achievement. I trained a lot of my skills in this competition such as critical thinking, creativity and for sure time management. Also, I learned to see questions from quite different perspective, always finding for something hidden, that would help me to answer the question. Overall, this experience was perfect for me.

                I will certainly try to compete again, since this is not a one time event and actually it’s a league. I hope my friends would invite my again and that I will experience it again.

Photo of my team:

Doing something beneficial to the society and deceased people

                Our IB classes and other school students collaborated and did something great. We saw a problem that in autumn, when the leaf fall down, most of the public spaces aren’t cleaned, especially the graveyard in Antakalnis. Hence, we decided to contact them and agree on our participation in the clean-up of the graveyard. It was done on a Saturday morning and during the day we managed to gather most of the leaves in the graveyard and it really made it look cleaner and more appropriate to the dead people graveyards.

                I saw a great importance in this event, since we need to take care of these kinds of public place. The environment of graveyards should be as clean as possible to ensure that we give our respects to the deceased people and I would say it was my main aim. During the whole activity I worked as actively as possible and with the good teamwork of our group we managed to do the hard work.  The whole process was not that challenging physically, but one thing was hard to do. The area of graveyards had also many leaves on them and the problem is that it’s not ethical to step on them, thus I had implemented hard work in order to clean them without doing that. We done a few things to make it possible and I am glad that we had succeeded to do that.

                This activity really benefitted the Antakalnis graveyard because not only it was more appealing to the visiting relatives of deceased people, but also, as I said, we showed our respect to them and in doing that we showed that it’s an important thing to go. I hope that I will have this kind of an event in the future or even organize one, since it’s one of the things that helps to make our society and surroundings better and it was a great experience to have. The feeling of doing something beneficial is no of the best in the world.

Here my group is working hard in order to clean the graveyard:

 Here is me happily cleaning the graveyard: