![“[Building nerf blasters] became this outlet of creativity for me that hasn't been matched by anything else. The process [of] making a build complete to your desire is such a painstakingly difficult process, but I've had to learn from [the skills needed from] soldering to proper painting. There's so many different options for everything, if you think about it, it exists. The best part is [that] if it doesn't exist, you can build it yourself," Ishaan Parate said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/DSC_8149-900x604.jpg)
![“When I came into high school, I was ready to be a follower. But DECA was a game changer for me. It helped me overcome my fear of public speaking, and it's played such a major role in who I've become today. To be able to successfully lead a chapter of 150 students, an officer team and be one of the upperclassmen I once really admired is something I'm [really] proud of,” Anvitha Tummala ('21) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2021-07-25-at-9.50.05-AM-900x594.png)
![“I think getting up in the morning and having a sense of purpose [is exciting]. I think without a certain amount of drive, life is kind of obsolete and mundane, and I think having that every single day is what makes each day unique and kind of makes life exciting,” Neymika Jain (12) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Screen-Shot-2017-06-03-at-4.54.16-PM.png)
![“My slogan is ‘slow feet, don’t eat, and I’m hungry.’ You need to run fast to get where you are–you aren't going to get those championships if you aren't fast,” Angel Cervantes (12) said. “I want to do well in school on my tests and in track and win championships for my team. I live by that, [and] I can do that anywhere: in the classroom or on the field.”](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/DSC5146-900x601.jpg)
![“[Volleyball has] taught me how to fall correctly, and another thing it taught is that you don’t have to be the best at something to be good at it. If you just hit the ball in a smart way, then it still scores points and you’re good at it. You could be a background player and still make a much bigger impact on the team than you would think,” Anya Gert (’20) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/AnnaGert_JinTuan_HoHPhotoEdited-600x900.jpeg)
![“I'm not nearly there yet, but [my confidence has] definitely been getting better since I was pretty shy and timid coming into Harker my freshman year. I know that there's a lot of people that are really confident in what they do, and I really admire them. Everyone's so driven and that has really pushed me to kind of try to find my own place in high school and be more confident,” Alyssa Huang (’20) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/AlyssaHuang_EmilyChen_HoHPhoto-900x749.jpeg)
Students participate in annual TEAMS competition
Provided by Anthony Silk
Forty-eight Harker students who participated in the TEAMS competition stand inside San Jose State University. The competition, which took place Feb. 27, included two other schools, Palo Alto High School and Mountain View High School.
March 5, 2016
Two teams from Harker took first place in their divisions in the multiple choice portion of the annual Test of Engineering Aptitude in Math and Science (TEAMS) competition, which took place last Saturday Feb. 20 from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at San Jose State University.
Six teams of eight self-coached students participated in the event: four in the freshman-sophomore category and two in the junior-senior division. The contest involved two parts: the first involved students taking a multiple-choice exam, and the second part consisted of three essays related to the contest’s theme and a design challenge in which contestants competed to build the tallest paper tower possible.
“I did the hands-on design part, and that was really fun because I got to work together with my team to build something.” Katherine Tian (9) said “I think we did really well, too, so that was a nice bonus.”
Freshmen Ryan Adolf, Ayush Alag, Bobby Bloomquist and Leon Lu work on constructing a tower out of uncooked spaghetti and duct tape as part of an activity run in between the two portions of the TEAMs competition. The tower had to support a marshmallow on top and the team with the highest tower received a bag of marshmallows as their prize.
Each team was allowed to choose what component of the theme they wanted to cover, and most groups assigned individuals separate topics in order to divide the work. The overarching theme of this year’s competition was efficiency, but it covered a wide range of topics including the economization of manufacturing processes, lenses, space travel and genomics. This wider variety of subject matter is different from last year’s competition, when the theme focused upon environmental issues such as hydroelectric, solar and nuclear power.
“The different themes affect the kinds of multiple choice questions asked and the theme of the essays,” said Shaya Zarkesh (10), who worked on the topic of Microscopes, Telescopes and Lenses. “[My topic] had tougher formulas, like Snell’s formula, which posed some challenges to solve the problems quickly and accurately. However, this year’s essay topic was easier, since the topic was a bit narrower and focused — no pun intended — on a specific problem.”
Harker teams took first place in both the 9th/10th grade division and the 11th/12th grade division for the multiple choice portion. The winning team in the younger category consisted of sophomores Jerry Chen, Amy Jin, Michael Kwan, Jimmy Lin, Sahana Srinivasan, Justin Xie, Shaya Zarkesh and Randy Zhao. The group received a score of 67 out of 80, six points above the second-place team.
Jerry, the team captain, reflected upon his team’s experience having to prepare themselves for the competition instead of being instructed by a teacher.
“I think one of the main things is figuring out what to do,” he said. “Each year is really different, so sometimes it doesn’t really help to do past problem sets, but I think it’s still worth doing them because it gives you an example of a format for the competition. I think that was probably the main challenge: figuring out and finding all the resources, because you don’t have a teacher guiding you.”
Jerry Chen discussed how his team won first place and what future TEAMS competitors should do in order to receive a good ranking in the contest.
The leading team in the junior-senior category comprised of juniors Steven Cao, Neymika Jain, Evani Radiya-Dixit, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Arjun Subramaniam, Peter Wu and David Zhu. Last summer, this team made it to the national level of the competition and placed second in the freshman-sophomore division.
Neymika, a TEAMS participant since her freshman year, described her favorite part of participating in the event.
“I would have to say [my favorite part] is working with the people that I work with because they really know what they want and they can really go forward — it makes me more passionate about the subjects I find and research,” she said. “They’ve taught me a lot about teamwork and collaborative effort [and] overall knowing when to ask for help and when to do it yourself.”
Overall results from the state level contests, combining the multiple choice, essay and hands-on design scores, will come out in May. They will indicate whether teams scored high enough to qualify for nationals, which will take place from June 28 to July 2 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, TN.
