On October 14th 2021, I journeyed to Texas A&M to compete in an event known as Texas Junior Science Academy or TJAS. At this competition, participants from across the state presented a 12 minute presentation on an experiment they conducted.

A few weeks earlier, I submitted an abstract about my project. The abstract was for a project I had done in 9th grade about measuring the displacement of different soil types as longitudinal waves traveled through them, click here to learn more about it. On September 17th, I kept checking my phone for the email. It finally arrived around late morning, I quickly clicked on it. The first words I saw were “I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected to present your research…” Yes! I was in! My project was one of the 10 accepted for my category, so I wrote a research paper that included the problem, hypothesis, materials, procedure, methods, results, and conclusion. I submitted the research paper on the 4th and began preparing for the competition.

A week and half later, on October 13th, my dad, Ahmad Siddiqui, and I drove to College Station, TX. Most of the drive was plagued by heavy rain, and I practiced my presentation a few times. We reached the hotel at 11:30 pm and I ended up making a few last minute changes before I went to sleep. The next morning I woke up at 7:30, grabbed breakfast from the hotel’s buffet and hurriedly got ready. By 9, we were at the A&M Memorial student center, the location of that day’s presentation. My presentation was at 10:50 but I wanted to be there early to check practice. I met with my classmate from Academy high school, and we listened to each other’s presentations. At 10:10 my dad and I left for the presentation room. 

As I listened to the others’ presentations, I felt discouraged. Theirs were much more impactful than mine, and the judges seemed to really like them. When it was my turn to present, I connected my computer and began. My presentation was about measuring the displacement of soil after playing vibrations with a speaker in a tank full of soil. At the end, one of the judges warned me that he had a background in geology, and proceeded to ask me some tough questions, such as “Did you calculate the effect of density on propagation?” or “what are the specific qualities of the soil types?” They recommended that in the future, I should be more quantitative than qualitative and cite my sources on the slides to increase trustworthiness of the research I provided.

After the presentation we walked around the campus for a bit and ate lunch, and then returned to the hotel to get some rest until dinner. At 5:15, we left for Memorial Center. There was a lot of traffic, so we reached there a few minutes past 6 even though it was barely a few miles away. For dinner they served us baked potatoes with a variety of toppings, salad, and a bread roll. After dinner, it was time to see who the finalists were. As the finalists were announced, they stood up and everyone applauded for them. These 10 students would be presenting the next day to see who would win the top 6 spots to go to the national Academy of Science competition in Pennsylvania.

The next day, we woke up early again and packed up everything and left for Rudder Tower. The presentations were held here because the rooms were much bigger and could fit larger audiences. I wanted to see the 1st place presentation for my category, Environmental Science. The winning presentation was about indoor pollution, and testing how different activities such as frying and spraying chemicals affected the air quality and impacted us. It was an interesting presentation, and I could see why it won. The next presentation was by the winner from the medical category, and her project was about programming an AI to diagnose heart conditions from ECG’s. After the presentations, we had a few hours to pass until the awards ceremony. While waiting, I considered ways I could improve my future projects and discussed them with my classmate from school. 

Finally, it was time for the awards. They began with honorable mention. I received an honorable mention in my category. In each category, there were several people who won honorable mention, first place, and second place, but only one person got first place. These were the finalists in each category that were announced the previous day. Everyone received an award so I technically received last place. 

After the ceremony, we drove back to Plano, reaching home around 4:30. I missed 2 days of school, but the experience was educational and I learned a lot about how to take my project to the next level. For future experiments, I will for sure use more quantitative data, and research formulas to see if they are applicable to my experiment to make the data more useful. This is a better way to discern patterns, and something I saw other contestants doing as well as something the judges suggested.

Make sure you can relate your project to a real world issue that can help people

Save a pdf copy of your presentation before you leave- you don’t know if you’ll be able to connect to the Wi-Fi wherever you’re going, so it’s better to be on the safe side and have a non-web copy

Cite your sources throughout the presentation- judges want to see where you go the information you based your experiment off

Practice as much as possible- the better you know your presentation, the more professional it will sound

Have lots of picture- more pictures and less text make the presentation less confusing, and easier for others to visualize

Use as much quantitative data as you can- include formulas, statistics, and any other useful data

At the end of the presentation thank the people that helped you through the experiment- it can be your school, the lab or research facility you worked with, or the organizers of the event you are participating at