Inside OPSI: My Perspective

I first joined OPSI when my classmate Wynona was talking about it, she said that she needed a partner for the competition, and that she hasn't found one, so she talked about the subjects that were included in the competition and asked if I wanted to become her partner for the competition, and I agreed. We had multiple meetings with the other participants in our school to discuss the research that we wanted to do, and also to start making the proposal. 

Me and Wynona were the last to submit our research, it took us a while to find an interesting research that we could do, we finally decided to make paper out of rambutan skin. After we finished making our proposal, we submitted it to our teacher, and our teacher sent it to the competition judges later on. A few days later, our teacher announced the groups that passed to the next step, and there I saw that our names were written there. After we received that announcement, all the participants that passed onto the next level had to make the research product. 

First, me and Wynona decided to do it in her house, so I went there and we started to make the paper. After we finished making the paper, we had to wait a day or two for the paper to dry. A few days later, Wynona came to school and gave me a file filled with the paper that we had made, the results were actually pretty good. After we made our research product there was another selection for OPSI Kota, and there were three groups from different subjects which are IPS, Teknik, and the last subject was IPA, which was me and Wynona's group chosen. Me, Wynona, and the other two groups worked very hard to prepare ourselves for the presentation and also for the exhibition of our research product. We had to prepare our powerpoint presentation, and we had to practice multiple times for the presentation. 

The exhibition was held in Taman Pintar, which is very close to our school, so we drove there using the school car with some other teachers. When we arrived, we started decorating our stand according to the stand number that was given to us, it was really exhausting to decorate the stand. The next day after decorating our stand, it was already time for the exhibition to start. I arrived at seven o'clock in the morning, and started to arrange the table neatly together with my friend. The guests came in early, there were lots of guests that came to see our stand, there were so many people that I had to explain our research to, that my mouth was starting to feel dry from a lot of talking. Our presentation day was on day two, we were really stressed and practiced together until night time. On the presentation day when we were already in front of the presentation room, waiting for our turn, I was feeling anxious, all that I could think was what if I made a mistake or started stuttering, or if I would mess the whole thing up. Finally, the judge called our names, I gathered up my courage and went inside the room with Wynona, in the presentation room, we actually did better than I expected, even if it wasn't that perfect, since I made one mistake, I still think we did well, I felt relieved after we finished our presentation and went out of the room. The next day they were announcing the winners, sadly, we didn't win a place, but I think that I could learn a lot from this experience, and I didn't regret joining this competition.