Academic Decathlon!

Hey team,

This is Joe again. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you all about the awesome state Academic Decathlon competition I just attended. The Academic Decathlon, for those of you who haven't heard of it, is a high school academic program designed challenge the best and brightest students from each school in a competition with other schools from their region and state. The students compete in 10 different categories (hence, decathlon): Art, Economics, Essay, Interview, Language and Literature, Mathematics, Music, Science, Social Science, and Speech. In high school, I did Drama Debate and Forensics, so I couldn't do Aca Deca, but I wish I had the chance.

For my part, I was a guest judge and proctor for the event, and I got to hand out 18 scholarships during the awards banquet. I have quite a background in public speaking, so I was totally stoked to be a judge for both the Interview and Speech programs. These student were great!

The result of the competition were as follows:
1st Place large school: Lathrop High School (my alma mater)
1st Place medium school: Monroe Catholic Jr/Sr High School
1st Place small school: Klawock High School

If you want to find out more about the Alaska Academic Decathlon, feel free to visit their website. They also compiled a video of the event and it's online here. If you watch the video, make sure to watch out for the couple of shots of me! Thanks for reading, and I'll update you with exciting information from my adventures soon!

Joe