6 Min Read
Face it: your science project sucked, but it can’t be that bad, right?
On the bright side, at least that nightmare is finally over…
“Um…how about I use ‘laser beams’ to measure the speed of light?” the 14-year-old me hesitantly suggested.
I looked expectantly at my mustachioed science teacher, hoping that this would be a solid enough idea for my mandatory science fair project.
“We already know what the speed of light is. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come up with something original,” Mr. Susman calmly replied.
And thus began my career as a half-assed scientist…
Actually, now that I think about it, the half-assery began a year earlier, when I was in 7th grade at Christian Schools of Springfield (Missouri). That year, the science project I really wanted to do was to put various metals in the microwave and see how long it took before the sparks started to fly. I honestly don’t know why that got shot down without any reasonable discussion; nevertheless, I was forced to come up with a different project altogether. Finally, the night before it was due, I threw together a project that measured how long it took various small objects, such as string, a button, belly button lint, etc. to fall/float to the ground when dropped from about 6 feet up. I know, I know: half-assery, at it’s finest, but I figured since my Christian school didn’t take science seriously, then why should I?
When I showed up the next day with my hand-drawn charts and graphs exploring the aforementioned topic, I was directed to setup next to my dyslexic best friend, Josh. What was my C-Average amigo’s science project about? Surface tension of water. Even if you accounted for the gross disparity in access to resources (his dad was a doctor; mine wasn’t–if you get my drift), the contrast in our core intellectual content was stark. Needless to say, for being the token smart kid in our class, having my kindergarten-level experiment on display directly next to real science was incredibly embarrassing.
Fast-forward roughly 12 months to my 8th grade year, where I found myself at Ocean View Junior High, a public school in California, in the extremely science-focused ‘Research & Development’ class for so-called ‘gifted students’.
If I didn’t want to be laughed out of the classroom by my high-IQ peers, then I had to seriously up my science game from the sloppy shenanigans I had pulled in 7th grade.
But in the end, the most original idea I had come up with wasn’t much more evolved–sorry, I mean, ‘intelligently designed’– beyond the stereotypical model ‘erupting volcano’: at the heart of both was the well-known chemical reaction of mixing vinegar and baking soda to make bubbles. In my case, though, I posited that dosing young tomato plants with a little carbon dioxide on a daily basis would result in a measurable growth spurt.
In retrospect, it wasn’t a completely horrible idea, but it wasn’t the most imaginative either. But when you combine that with limited financial resources, then the execution really starts to suffer.
To begin with, mixing a cup of vinegar with the appropriate amount of baking soda for each plant in the ‘treatment’ group probably only provided a barely perceptible boost in the CO2 available to that plant–and even though those two ingredients are cheap, they still aren’t free, Bub (I did at least have the plants isolated from the surrounding atmosphere by having them covered in plastic bags, though).
Of course there was the cost of the tomato plants themselves, and thanks to my budget, I was able to buy a whopping FOUR plants–2 ‘control’ plants (no dosing) and 2 ‘treatment’ plants (dosed). Honestly, if I would have been able to, say, triple the dosage, and, ya know, have 50 plants in each group, then it might have passed for a decent scientific endeavor. Alas, this ’twasn’t the reality I was living in.
But, wait! There was even more poor-kid shenanigans afoot…
“Thanks for printing these graphs for m–hey, what is up with the colors? That’s not how it looked on the computer I borrowed to make them!”
I peered over the several sheets that Michael, one of my richer, computer-with-a-color-printer-owning friends had printed off for me the night before our science projects were due. My sole graph, which charted the growth of the four plants over several weeks, was supposed to feature four lines of four different colors, yet what I was staring at was 2 red lines and 2 blue lines.
“What can I tell you? My printer ran out of yellow ink,” he replied, communicating the helplessness that he, too, felt about the situation.
I let out a heavy sigh.
“I guess beggars can’t be choosers, right?” I said, honestly acknowledging my current lot in life.
“Hey, it still looks pretty good. I’m sure it will be fine…well, mostly fine.” said the guy who would go on to become the Chief Scientist at Numerai (and, coincidentally, uses the exact same WordPress theme for his neuroscience/machine learning blog that I use here).
“Yeah, I guess no one will notice and and it’ll still get the message across,” I figured aloud.
*Later that day, in R&D…*
“So you’ll see here in Figure A a plot of the plants’ growth from Week 0 to Week 6.”
I didn’t have the strongest project, but I was trying to at least pretend that I did.
A kid halfway back in the classroom raised his hand–oh dear lord, it was that Jackass Jacob.
“So…which line is which plant?” he queried with a smirk on his face.
“Well the blue line is…oh, sh*t, uh, I’m not sure which blue line is Control 1 and which one is Treatment 2. Uh…um…dammit, Oliver, you and your printer have screwed me over!”
I eventually fumbled my way through the rest of my presentation, buoyed only by the promise that, no matter what, 10 minutes from now this nightmare of a scientific endeavor would be over forever, never to haunt me again…
“Listen up, youths, we got the Ventura County Science Fair coming up in a few weeks, and unfortunately, we can only send a select few of you,” announced Mr. Sogioka, our other R&D teacher (there were so many smarty-pants 6th, 7th, and 8th graders at our school, they needed two classrooms to contain us all and two teachers to wrangle us rascals).
Half the class groaned in disappointment, already knowing full well they weren’t going to make the cut. For my part, I could have cared less. My project had sucked chestnuts and I knew it. I was at peace with that hard truth.
“Let’s see here…first on the list: David Chandler,” Mr. Susman announced.
“Good for David,” I thought to myself. “If your project is ‘The Impact Of Computer Monitor Radiation On The Development Of the Fruit Fly’, you sure the hell deserve to go show that sh*t off to the world. You sir, are a true scientist. A bit of a pompous ass, yes, but a ----- good scientist nonetheless.”
“Next: Michael Oliver…” Mr. Sogioka proclaimed.
“…for his study, ‘The Impact of Not Knowing How The F*** To Change A Depleted Printer Cartridge On Your Lower-Income Resource-Strapped Classmate’, no doubt,” I quipped as I elbowed Michael sprightly.
“Har, har, you’re hilarious,” he responded.
“Seriously, though,” I whispered to him, “I’m kinda glad you suck at printing things off in color. It got me out of the County Science Fair, at least!”
“…B.J.!”
I jerked my head back to the front of the class at the sound of my name.
“I’m listening! I’m listening, I swear, Mr. Sogioka! I promise,” I lied. I had been chatting Michael’s ear off the whole time and hadn’t been listening as our two most esteemed educators had read off the rest of the List of the Damned, the poor souls who had to go to the county science fair.
“Huh, what? I was just announcing the students moving on to the next level of science.” Mr. Sogioka seemed confused.
“Congratulations, B.J., you were the last one to make the cut–you’re going to County! Wait…what?” Mr. Susman said, seeming just as surprised as I was at this turn of events.
“Nooooooo! Why me?” I rended my shirt in two and shook my fist to the heavens.
“Oh, you know exactly why,” Mr. Sogioka looked at me with…no, it wasn’t quite a sh*t-eating grin on his face..it was more of sh*t-eating smirk.
“Dammit, Sogi-yoki, you’ve screwed me again!” I muttered.
“What was that you said, hmmm?” he inquired, clearly full of the power he be trippin’ on.
“Nothing, Donald, I didn’t say anything at all.”
“Hey, look on the bright side,” Michael interjected, “At least I can reprint your graphs in full color this time around.”
I stared daggers at him.
“Yes,” I replied with all the sarcasm I could muster, “CYK graphs will prevent it from a being a complete and utter fustercluck this time around…”
The point of the story is never make fun of your bald Japanese American teachers by racistly butchering their name and calling them Sogi-Yoki. Yeah, you read about that last week right? Of course you did. And of course you would have also known that it was just an honest, oh-fudge-I-wasn’t-really-paying-attention mistake on my part. But not in ol’ Donnie-Boy’s eyes, no sirree, Bob!
And now, finally, Karma had smiled upon his shiny dome of a head and had given him the chance to rain down retribution on me, the proverbial thorn in his side: he was sending my sorry ass to the county state fair–not based on merit in any way, shape, or form–only for the sole purpose of seeing me scientifically embarrass myself on an even bigger stage.
So, in the spirit of the holiday (Festivus, of course), I am officially airing this grievance in the general direction of one Mr. Donald Sogioka. Sogi-Yoki, sir, what you did to me was just plain ----- -up. If I were a lesser man, I would blame my lack-luster scientific career on you, but I won’t. The mere presence of three tiny letters after my name gives me the last laugh in this matter, and that is enough for this chatty slacker:
P.
h.
D…
Content created on: 7/9 December 2023 (Thurs/Sat)
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