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.