On Saturday March 9, MST students participated in the Manual-wide science fair.

“At Manual [science] fair, you’re surrounded by a lot of people you know, and most people are practicing their presentations and talking to their friends before judging starts. Once judging starts, everyone gets a hundred times more nervous. In preliminary judging, you never know how many judges you’re going to see, if they’ll be in groups or anything like that. That makes everyone a lot more anxious. Some people might get judged by five individual judges and others might get judged by one group of five judges,” Delayna Shulak (10) said.

Judging is not done by any of the Manual staff, so facing every judge was a brand new fresh face. Many of the Manual students supported each other with words of encouragement.

“When you’re there with your friends everyone sort of supports each other and talks about the judges like who was mean and what they said after we presented.” Shulak said.

Science fair has proved to be very beneficial to the students who participated in it, giving them speaking confidence and pride in their own creations.

“Science fair definitely has made me a more confident presenter. Speaking directly to judges is so much easier since I’ve gone through science fair twice now. The judges this year even asked me if I was a senior because they said I was so professional and enjoyable to listen to,” Shulak said.