Academic All-Stars

My worst fears have materialized in the Academic All-Stars competition. A girl from Grant who co-authored a paper is also applying in science. The only way I have a chance of beating this kind of competition is by somehow making myself look like a sort of mad genius in the next five weeks. So far, I'm going to do a small stella project with Ms. Fisher. I just started typesetting equations for a mathematical derivation and written explanation of the Laplacian orbit determination method, which I am appending to my orbit determination project. I also have at least 50 pages of lab data from my cold fusion days two years ago. The only thing working particularly in my favor is my concentration in physics, which has the convenient reputation of being the most imposing and arrogant field of science. To the layman, there's nothing more forbidding than pages of multiple integrals, differential operators, and Greek with lots of dots and hats on top of it. As long as the veil of notation remains confounding enough, ordinary people will always confuse basic physics with the apex of brilliance. I just have to get my act seriously together if there is hope to compensate for my lack of scientific publications. The only good news I heard was that this potential competitor apparently (this has gone through the rumor mill) struggled in AP Chemistry. While Penk's class doesn't really follow the AP standards, the AP curriculum for Chemistry isn't terribly difficult. Hope is always justifiable until failure hits.