Crossroads wins at the SDSU S3 Symposium
Just over a week ago I was at San Diego State University competing at SDSU’s S3 Student Symposium - SDSU’s yearly research competition for both undergrad and graduate students - as the only High Schooler in attendance. During the competition, I gave a 10-minute presentation before answering questions for the following 5 minutes. The presentation went incredibly well, so great in fact that the symposium created an award just for me (I’ll talk about why later)! Lets breakdown this competition, how Crossroads got a new award, and what this means for the future of the site.
The Presentation
Above is the video recording of my presentation and question answers for the S3 Symposium (Thanks Mom!). SDSU has a very strict schedule for its symposium, and only allows 10 minutes for a presentation and 5 minutes for question answering. In the room were a moderator, 2 professors who were judging, the head of SDSU research, who decided to step in for just this presentation, and a crowd of other students and parents alike. Being my first research expo I have ever attended, I had no expectations heading in. The event took place mostly in SDSU’s main presentation hall, but I was situated in a separate meeting room for my speech.
For the speech, I covered the history of the site, the impact of the site, and the future of the site. It serves as a good overview of what Crossroads is for those who aren’t familiar. I encourage everyone to listen to the presentation to hear the story of Crossroads if you havent already, plus I think the speech is good overall. When it came time for questions, the professor judges and the head of research both asked really good questions that brought up some pretty good flaws in the site that I am now addressing for the future.
The Award
Each S3 presentation is scored by the two judges present. However, as a High Schooler, I was told that I was not eligible for any awards as I was not a current student. This is because all of the awards were scholarships and gave out money to the winners. Yet, as you can hear in the video above, I was one of the top-scoring presentations among all 500 students, doing so well that the organizers CREATED and award for me. The award is called the Outstanding High Schooler Award, and can be seen in my hands below:
What this means
The fact that an award was created for Crossroads means one thing: it works, and it works well. With Crossroads expanding to LA, we hope that this recognition will put validity in our site (as well as our numbers in helping close to 6,000 individuals) and will make it easier to expand and help people. Crossroads is going places, and I am super excited! I would like to thank Dr. Welsh for the opportunity, and thank my parents for supporting me along the way!