I remember sitting in my AP Statistics class one day, amazed when half the class was missing because they were competing at the state science fair. Later, I found out they got to go to Busch Gardens, and even more impressive—they were featured on the news for winning scholarships! That moment hit me, and I knew I had what it took to be there. Fast forward a year, I won my regional science fair, placed 3rd at state, and went on to compete at ISEF. It wasn't easy, but the hard work was worth it. I’d love to hear about your research dreams. What are you aiming for? Drop a comment and let’s see where your passion takes you!

So I see many students posting things like "will this get me into...?" or "are these EC's strong enough?" kind of posts, which is completely fine. But I was just wondering whether those that reply are actually credible. That is to say, they may be students who might have had experience in research or in making organizations, but its just that they are not experienced enough with the admissions process. Unless they are people from the admissions department, my general thought would be to accept some parts of it, but not take their comments seriously. Don't get me wrong, those that reply are trying to help, and I love it. But it's just that it may not be the most accurate answer. So when looking at feedbacks, take it with a grain of salt, because in the end, they are high school students. Hope this helps!

Compared to the research and projects everyone else is doing (seriously, y'all are on fire - keep that up), this may not seem like much, but when I found out, I was literally on cloud 9 and I just wanted to share (this is gonna be a long post). And also I'm just so grateful to whatever holy magic divine intervention thing is helping me. So, to backtrack, this summer, I had this internship (Emory Next Gen), and it's basically a (6-ish week) STEM and research exposure program. In all honesty I didn't think I was going to get in and I was prepared for that "We regret to inform you ..." email, since I was under a lot of stress during the application timeframe (I actually lost my period for almost 3 months because of it) and submitted it maybe 2-3 days before the deadline. But going back to the internship. We had a final symposium, and it wasn't like a "look at the big research we did" kind of symposium, more like a "look at what we did" presentation. We had tons of freedom in how we wanted to do it (The article about this year's cohort talks about that: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2024/07/er_nextgen_genetics_internship_16-07-2024/story.html), and for mines, I made a "Choose your lab!" animated RPG 1980s game style video of everything we did. I put a lot of effort into it; I was on a time crunch of about 1 1/2 weeks-ish, and ya girl is a novice in animation and videomaking to put it simply (guess what video-editing tool I used .... ✨Canva, the PPT alternative✨). When that article came out, my symposium wasn't mentioned, and I was pretty sad, but at the same time, it didn't really matter, because I was really proud of my friends (one kid's presentation got quoted so many times, and I wasn't even miffed, because his presentation was incredible), and they were really impressed with my video, which was all I cared about (if you see the video *I'll link it later*, you'll see how it was catered to us). Anyways, it got pushed to the back of my mind, but then, yesterday, I got an email from the program director saying that they're adding my video into the information page for the program, and that THE DIRECTOR OF SOCIAL MEDIA AT EMORY WAS IMPRESSED BY MY VIDEO AND THEY WANTED TO KNOW HOW I MADE IT. Now two emotions going on:

One is made by me and my club panel. I will post this to my club page, so I want some thoughts about it.

As some of you may know, I do research on Korea's education system. Though I've been doing it for just less than a month(so relatively new), an unexpected thing happened. I sent an email with a question to a author/professor of a book I was reading, which is titled "Competitive Education is Barbaric". And you know what? He replied. And he wants to make a CALL with me! Now, what does this show? Just last month, I was a non-enthusiastic researcher. But after I was introduced to this community, I was motivated to pursue my own research, which led me to this event happening. I can't hide my excitement... I'm just happy! And I'm sure you guys can achieve this level of success too. Just remember that the faster you start, the better the outcome. Don't hesitate, and keep going forward. UPDATE: I had the call today, and I must say, it was a very motivating experience! But I do have a question. At the end, he said "call me again if you have any more questions", in a kind of hurried way. What do you think this means?