In April, senior Akshar Cowlagi sat down to take the U.S. Earth Science Olympiad Open Exam, a series of multiple choice and short answer questions. A couple months later, he was competing with the other 39 top scorers from across the country for a spot on the international olympiad team, all staged in a week-long camp at the University of Tulsa over the summer.
Throughout the camp, Cowlagi and his peers were assigned numerous projects related to earth science.
“My favorite part of the camp was just staying up with my group or other people and working together on them,” he said. “We pulled three straight all-nighters.”
According to Cowlagi, the biggest downside of the camp was its location in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “We went on a bunch of trips outside to visit different earth science-related places,” he said. “And because there are a lot of ticks in the area, we had to wear pants even in 100 degrees.”
One of the trips was to a rock outcrop in Tulsa, a part of the natural landscape that’s been uplifted to reveal various rock formations. The campers spent the day collecting different fossils in the area.
“We were basically taking a large hammer and smacking at different parts of the rock formation to find fossils or things like that,” Cowlagi said. “I remember finding this geode that had calcite crystals inside the rock formation.”
Cowlagi’s favorite memory from camp was the very last night, after all the competition was out of the way. “We were just chilling, and trying to stay up all night. We did a version of beer pong where instead of alcohol the penalty was drinking bottles of tomato sauce. Apparently, [the organizers] just bought 20 containers of tomato sauce for no reason, and it didn’t end up getting used. So we had 20 bottles and were just taking straight shots.”
Cowlagi ended up in the top 12 campers, earning a spot as one of the alternate members of Team USA.
Despite the competition, the campers became close over the course of the week. Cowlagi still keeps in contact with a few of them.
“There were 40 people there, so I met a lot of different people who were all super interesting,” he said. “After all the day’s events were done, we would usually play ping pong or basketball. We’d just hang out doing different things, and the people were honestly one of the best parts.”
