Finally, the culmination of all our hard work was realized yesterday. Our Academic Team had its debut competition on the WGBH program "High School Quiz Show," which will air sometime in March. We had done an online competition some months ago, which I was unable to participate in. We will have a final competition like that one in April I believe, but the competition yesterday was unique. Our talent was tested on television, really putting the pressure on us to do well.
I can't publicize the results of out competition against Hingham, but we did very well. I was pleased with our performance, given our relative inexperience. I think I was very well prepared for the geography questions, and I knew all of them that were in that category. It was great to be confident in my answers and I think my confidence in that subject area really helped encourage my team. It was definitely a strength and in the first round I got a lot of questions right and the team was doing well.
It was very challenging for me to participate in the lightning round. I had to represent the whole team and answer questions by myself for 30 seconds. It was incredibly nerve-wracking, but I was able to keep my composure and I was very proud of my performance. It was a great challenge but I am glad to say that I overcame it and did well. I greatly improved our teams score and knew most of the answers. My greatest struggle was hitting the buzzer in time.
In our final two rounds, our team didn't do as well. The third round was especially unsuccessful, because we were unfamiliar with all the categories. It was unfortunate but there was nothing we could do, and we managed to answer a few low-scoring questions. In retrospect, we should have prepared in a broader area, seeing as we spent a lot of time on geography and science and the questions were more focused on art, history, and quotes. We did fairly well in the final round, certainly better than the third, but again we suffered because of our relatively small area of expertise.
I am proud of my performance and that of my team overall. We worked hard and prepared fairly well, but it seemed that we were just unlucky in some portions of the quiz, especially the categories that didn't coincide with our specialized knowledge. To improve my performance, I realized that I need to listen carefully and not be overly anxious. Sometimes I would be so excited to answer a question that I wouldn't listen to it in its entirety and get it wrong. Sometimes I was so anxious that even though someone else buzzed in and was about to deliver the answer, I spit it out before they had the opportunity. I need to work on being calmer and less jumpy when I prepare to answer questions.
Ultimately, I am pleased with our efforts. I'm very happy with myself and with my team. Even though we didn't always work to well together and even though I had some issues with Marliee, we all managed to come together in the end and perform to the best of our abilities. I was clearly very committed to this activity and I'm happy with my perseverance. I hope the Academic Team continues to be successful in the future.
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