Awards

It is hard to get through life without a few awards here and there. My all happen to fall in the realm of science and mathematics. Go figure.

Awards

2003 College of Charleston Outstanding Student of Computer Science

This is awarded to graduating Computer Science students for performance in comptuer science. I also graduated cum laude.

2002 South Carolina School of Science and Mathematics Award

This award was for my research and presentation Software Engineering for Artificial Intelligence Projects. While the research was designated a team project, I was the team leader. That left me to give the presentation alone, later getting a personal compliment form one of the judges on my performance.

1998-2002 CofC ACM Programming Competition, 1^st Place 5 years in a row

Twice a year, the CofC ACM Student Chapter has a programming competition designed after the ACM World Programming Competition. Not only did I win every time I competed, I was asked to not compete in some of the competitions to increase participation.

2000 SE Regional ACM Programming Competition, 2^nd Place Division II, 6^th Place Overall

This is the regional part of the ACM World Programming Competition. While I placed high in 1999 and 2001, 2^nd was the highest I placed.

1998 Harrison Randolph Calculus Award, College of Charleston

At the end of the first year of calculus, students may take an advanced calculus test which, as I now know, has problems that cannot be solved with first year calculus knowledge. The highest score on the test wins the award.

1986 Missouri Western Chemathon, 6^th Place Overall

This is a chemistry and physics test. It took three hours to complete. Because I went to a tiny little country school and I was competing with hundreds of kids from huge prep schools, I was rather surprised to make the top ten.

Regrets

Now, what award did I not win that bothers me the most? Was it blowing the SE Regional ACM Programming Competition in 2002? Was it falling 3 peppers short of winning a red hot chili peppers eating contest that would have awarded me with front row seats and back stage passes to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert? How about losing a physics trivia competition for hiccupping while pronouncing "incandescent" (only to have my cousin finish first place)?

No. I lost all of those due to my own (lack of) skill, concentration, and self-discipline.

I am still bothered that I didn't get Student of the Week in third grade. Every week, a student won Student of the Week. It went in alphabetical order, as there were the same number of kids in the class as weeks in the school year. However, when my week came, they skipped me. A few weeks later, it was the last week of school. Every single student in the class won Student of the Week once except me. There was only one week left. I had to win, right? No. They gave Student of the Week to the whole school. It heavily reinforced my poor opinion of my school.