How to win a scientific school contest?
Monday, April 12, 2004First of all offer to write a nice paper on ‘Business Opportunities on the Internet’ for your university’s scientific communication session (I don’t really know how to translate ‘sesiune de comunicari stiintifice’ to English) to a teacher who you can’t fail or else your face will burn for months.
2 or 3 days before the event enter panic mode because you have nothing yet. Send out an email asking for desperate help from Dragos Novac of @rgumente but still delay writing until the last day. Even more, delay writing until 8 PM on the last day. Panic hardly and look up the links sent you by Dragos and decide that those are not what you’re looking for. Dig up your diploma project from your last university and check out the links in the bibliography section. Finally find a link to a nice essay on e-commerce. Start writing by mixing the ideas found in that essay with yours. Try to deal with the constant power failures (I don’t know what was going that day but approximately each 30 minutes the power was cut off for 2 seconds and then it was back like nothing happened) by pressing Ctrl + S every 5 minutes. Try not forgetting about this or curse hardly when you loose 10 to 20 minutes worth of thinking and typing. All this time drink a lot of Pepsi Twist. No really, about 1,5 liters will suffice. At about 10 PM and 3 / 4 done with your paper decide it’s time to go online. Stay online until 2 AM. Go to bed deciding that you’ll finish your paper in the morning. Try to sleep. Try harder. Even harder! Nope. All the Pepsi contains a lot of caffeine you know. Get up, go online. At 7 in the morning tell yourself it’s time to finish your paper. Start writing. Think hard trying not think about the sleepless night behind you and write a lot. Then curse very, but very, hard when you loose about 4 long paragraphs thanks to a new power failure. Look at the clock. Time to go. The paper’s not really finished but that’s it. Once you’re at your school rush into the teacher’s office and tell her what happened. She will be amused and will surely write you a nice ending. The event starts and you start fighting your sleepiness by concentrating on what the other essays have to say. After about two hours it’s your turn. Go out in front of an audience dressed in elegant custumes wearing your Puma sweatshirt and worn out jeans and read out your paper calmly trying to add what’s missing from your mind which haven’t had any sleep since more than 24 hours. See the amazement on the faces of the teachers and the audience and listen to some congratulations. Go back to your place and wait for the end of the event. Receive the prize for the first place with great amazement then once you’re out call your girlfriend and rave for three minutes about what just happened.
I’m not entirely sure that this will work for everyone but thanks to some kind of a miracle it worked for me. :-)