Xu Nai Lun, The Overall and Best Theoretical Winner of The 3rd IJSO

I am Nai Lun, Xu, the winner of Best Theoretical prize and Overall prize, from Chinese Taipei. Now, I am studying in second grade at National Tainan first senior high school. My interests are physics and chemistry. I like researching theories. Besides, I also enjoy doing experiments. I won the gold medal of International Junior Science Olympiad competition in 2006. After that, I was in the third place of APHO in 2008. I have been into science since I was very little. I am interested in International Junior Science Olympiad competition because the elder student at our school won the silver medal of it in 2004. Therefore, I attended it in 2006 and won the gold medal.

In my country, Taiwan, the selecting processes of national champions are two stages. In the first stage, there are about thirty students passing the qualification exam. In the second stage, six students are selected after 10 days intensive training.

I knew many excellent contestants from a selecting and training camp in my country. We discussed with each other. Basically, courses in the first phase of camp were not very difficult for us to understand and we comprehended most of what professors taught us but no one was sure about being selected since each of us has its specialty. I was lucky enough to be one of our final selected national champions eventually. Besides my happiness, I looked forward to accepting following challenges.

After becoming a national champion, the workload of training courses in an official camp is much heavier than that of training courses in a selecting and training camp. Everyday I needed to push myself harder and harder. Therefore, I studied much harder in an official camp than in a selecting and training one. As I expected, I learned a lot. The main courses in an official camp were physics, chemistry, and biology, my weakness. I thought no matter how hard I studied biology, I wouldn’t make any progress but it turned out I was wrong. After harder and harder studying, I made a great progress.

Students in our official camp are many more compared to those in our official camp before. After three month intensive training, we left for Brazil. We jumped on an opportunity to appreciate traditional costumes of different countries in grand opening ceremony. The next several days, we focused on the contest. I thought I was doing ok in multiple choices and essays but the very next day the experiment went terribly bad. I haven’t done any experiments of ferment of yeasts before. After the experiment, we knew we didn’t stand a chance on winning the gold medal at all. But things went well unexpectedly. Five of us got the gold medal, including me. I was quite surprised when I heard I was awarded a special prize although I was very satisfied with my theoretical part.

It is about five months from deciding to attend this competition, becoming national champion to even getting the gold medal and a special prize. The efforts I have made and cultivation and resources my country has provided within five months help me make the highest achievement in this stage. Besides the achievement, I have learned a lot of knowledge most junior high school students haven’t learned through. Moreover, I have learned how to look at things in different angles. Although the competition was not perfect, I still had a lot of communication and exchange of opinions and knowledge. Therefore, I realized in future the competition was not only in Taiwan but also in the whole world. Without contribution from all over the world, the competition of IJSO will not be held. Under the efforts of many countries, International Junior Science Olympiad was formed. For those who participate in the competition, how can you not try your best? I was not touched deeply in Brazil by the thought that we should cherish the chance to make foreign friends. I think and think after being back home and feel regret that I didn’t jump on the chance to make friends when I could. Maybe in some students’ opinions, winning a gold medal and a special prize is very important but to me making some foreign friends and interacting with them are the main purposes of this competition.