On the 7th of January, I nervously arrived at the 33rd National Science and Technology Forum which I would call home for the next 2 weeks. Most people were similar to me as they didn’t know a single person there, this helped us quickly find friends and familiar faces which I soon found out when I met my closest friends during a single elevator ride. From here we were quickly separated from the people we had just formed a connection with as we were thrown into our colour groups which soon became our forum families, for me this was the green group. 

The following day we began going to our ‘lectures’ which were each 3 hours long but they all varied in what you would do such as a chemistry lab session, a biomedical engineering walkthrough and computer science projects. These ‘lectures’ gave us a small view into many career paths we could follow and hopefully spark our interest in future studies. These were done in our colour groups which became our families which we not only went to lectures with but also fought it out on the volleyball court with.

The most highly contested events included colour groups going face to face whether it be on the courts or in front of the dragons. The famous forum volleyball tournament was spread over 4 nights where colour groups went face to face to hopefully come out on top and hopefully make it to the finals where they would face the toughest team of all, the advisors. Colour group activities weren’t limited to volleyball but many other things such as Dragons Den. Dragons Den was an activity run in colour groups which is very similar to Shark Tank as we had to come up with a system or product and pitch it to the Dragons aka the sharks. But of course, there was a science twist, this system or product had to help lower New Zealand’s emissions which was challenging but many great ideas were proposed to the dragons.

This science camp was the most amazing experience of my life as I got to meet other ‘nerds’ like me who have a deep passion for the sciences and come up with some possible ideas for my future studies. None of this would have happened without the help of the Alexandra Rotary club offering me a scholarship. So if you are like me and want to explore future pathways in the sciences I highly recommend applying to this camp during year 12 as it has opened my mind up to many opportunities.