“[Academic Decathlon is] not about demonstrating how good a student you already are. It’s about daring to push your limits, to master college-level material and to practice skills, like public speaking, that might be wholly new to you. It’s about the people you’ll meet along the way—the coaches who will mentor you, the competitors who will challenge you, and the teammates who will become your lifelong friends.”
— Dr. Les Martisko, Administrator for Academic Decathlon

Education is a collaborative and uplifting experience; it brings people who share common interests together and makes them thrive. I have always held this view of education and have benefited from the relationships that I developed with other knowledge-seeking students. The heart of my love for education and its collaborative …show more content…
Studying with my teammates over the course of the year not only brought us closer together, but also brought me to the realization that collaboration has brought the world forward in terms of knowledge and education. As my teammates and I learned, the collaboration of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert brought knowledge to the public in the first Encyclopedia and led the world into the Age of Reason. By bringing knowledge to a large enough populous, the collaboration that ensued lead the world forward in incredible ways. Not only did it expanded into the technology and innovation brought about by the Industrial Revolution, but the world’s population exploded, bringing about an unprecedented level of connectivity and idea sharing. From these concepts we built our team. By beginning with the “Dynamic Duo” of our team — another honors level competitor and myself — we broke down the material for our teammates, acting as both students and