The Advanced Science and Biotech excursion involved 25 Aquinas students from Years 9 and 10 who took part in the Rotary Science and Engineering challenge. This competition aimed to expose the students to hands-on work that is present in many fields of engineering and to inspire them to pursue a career and future in a particular field that interests them.

This day was no ordinary competition, in that it didn’t involve the usual paper and pen, but incorporated creative ways to explore and deal with topics and issues that are present in our modern-day world. The competition consisted of a variety of different challenges, from making our own hovercrafts to finely crafting a bionic hand. This challenge allowed me to find a passion for the field of engineering and opened my eyes to the vast array of programs our school has provided us. and gave me an insight on how I should not take these opportunities for granted but to get involved with them as a doorway of opportunities will arise.

The teams that we placed forward into this competition would all agree that the day was a major success and the experience and amount of knowledge we learned, with the help of Mr Hitie, was insurmountable. Jonathan Vinci, Nishok Nimalan, and I were tasked with building a hovercraft out of limited resources and had to complete seemingly impossible challenges with it. Not only did our hovercraft fail multiple times, but it persisted to deflate and malfunction every time we attempted the challenges. When finishing the challenge seemed impossible, we managed to put our creative minds together and construct a new hovercraft from our scavenged materials. Only through our teamwork, resilience and determination were we able to push through and complete this challenge with a respectable result.

I believe this reflects perfectly on the values we learn at the college and what we need in our daily lives in order to strive for excellence. With the help of staff such as Cyril Hitie and Megan Monks who made this whole day possible, we were able to be exposed to real-life scenarios and problems that would help us prepare for our future careers.