By Calvin Cho
Last week, I had the honor of competing at UCLA's BruinMUN where I competed in the United Nations Environment Programme. The result was an approximation of 4th place out of 100 delegates and I ended up winning the Honorable Mention award. 

This was a tremendous award and achievement for me as I never thought I'd be able to win at such a prestigious competition. I competed as the delegation of Canada. Below was the research paper that I wrote prior to the conference on my country's policy:

Overall, I would say I'm proud of my performance. I do feel though that had I spoken more, I would've won Outstanding as I failed to get my motion for a moderated caucus passed. However, I am happy about the work I got done and I think it's a victorious day for me.

As part of the the Chamber Orchestra's schedule, we take part in the SCSBOA orchestra competition where we get ranked in comparison to the other orchestras within our region. Judges have the option to say as high as superior and if all judges deem that an orchestra is superior, an orchestra will get the rating "unanimous superior." 

This even is pretty big and around this time of the year, orchestra members get nervous as we question whether we can get the high ratings we want. Luckily though, this year, we got the unanimous superior rating, beating Concert Band which got superior (boo hoo).

At Pioneer Middle School, we have an annual competition called the academic olympics that allows students to compete for a number of academic subjects. This year, after 3 years of just watching, I decided to compete in the instrumental music competition, leading with a chamber group playing Allegro Concerto Grosso by Vivaldi. 

Although we ended up getting 3rd place, I was extremely proud of the work we accomplished as a group. The improvements we had musically was immense and I am so grateful I had this chance to compete.

I think something I found to be interesting was the fact that there were so many good people. I wondered for over a year how good these people were as I didn't make it in 7th grade. I learned this week that they're incredibly good. There were no repetitive mistakes; if we messed up once, it never happened again.