Pamela's Young Scientist experience

The BT Young Scientist and Technology exhibition was held from the 12th – 16th January.

Myself and the girls from the other four projects that were accepted woke up at six o’ clock on Wednesday morning not knowing what to expect. Several bus rides later, we reached the RDS and went in to register. It was only then that we found out that we didn’t have to be there until twelve. This was at HALF EIGHT.

After registering, getting our free stuff, making new friends and setting up our projects we headed out for some lunch.

After our lunch we came back to our first judging. The judges were a lot friendlier than I thought they would be. After the stress of the judging we went off to make some friends. We met people from Cork, Limerick, Galway, Tyrone, Donegal, Roscommon, Louth and our neighbour, Dublin.

On the first night we had a disco, but we all only had jeans and a jumper so we thought we might be a bit underdressed, but in the end it turned out that most people just wore their uniforms. Shannon and I started off dancing and it started a trend. After ten minutes, everybody in the room was on their feet and the night turned out to be a blast! I didn’t make it home until half eleven, and had to get up at half five the next morning!

The next day, I was suffering from sleep deprivation and that’s when Caoimhe and I decided that we’d stay in a hotel. We booked the hotel and went home to pack our gear. Although we were only staying for two nights, being girls, we brought bags and bags of clothes!

We had the table quiz that night and we thought it was hopeless considering we were in a room filled with scientists, but surprise surprise... WE CAME THIRD! (:

The school came on the Friday and all the girls came to look at our projects. Mr Lawlor took pictures of me, and now they’re on the school website, CRINGE.

The whole week was completely amazing. We made new friends and I just can’t wait to go back next year :D
Pamela