Signing Off

Last Friday was my final presentation night—I can finally say I’m finished with ISM! That was a massive relief following my most hectic week all year. The previous Saturday, I also went to Hebron High School for the national Chemistry Olympiad exam. I was relieved to find that several other students had a somewhat lacking chemistry education online, just like me. Overall, it was a great time being able to hang out with other students interested in chemistry, even if I’m not making the study camp for the international competition. Right after the exam, I had to fly out to Atlanta for DECA ICDC. Even though I didn’t make it to finals, I had so much fun spending time with friends and meeting new people. After coming back on Wednesday, I was worried about being ready about being ready to present on Friday. In the end, however, I had everything ready, save for my speech. When the time came to speak, I did much better than I expected, so it worked out for me in the end. Final Presentation Night was a great experience, since I got to explain my work to a captive audience. In other news, my mentor began submitting the manuscript published earlier on arXiv to different computational chemistry journals. It’s exciting to me to see the process of writing code go to completion by being written up and hopefully published. Overall, ISM has been a very rewarding and fulfilling experience, and I hope to keep working on some research in my field over the summer before ISM next year!