Hey there! I’m Annie, a 15-year-old from Thessaloniki, Greece. I love learning new things and pushing the limits of my curiosity!
Welcome (back) to my newsletter where I talk about my life and share interesting information about various topics! Subscribe to follow me on my journey :)
I’m back! After a full three months, I can’t wait to share my life’s update :)
✈️A trip full of new experiences: Almaty, Kazakhstan
This is something that took place at the end of my summer, but needless to say one of the highlights!
I had the opportunity to travel to Amaty, a city in Kazhakstan, and take part in the 11th International Young Naturalists Tournament (IYNT), a competition that combines scientific research with friendly debate. After having taken part in its national counterpart, HYNT (H stands for Hellenic), I had such a blast playing against teams from all over the world.
Some of the countries that participated were: Romania, Uganda, Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Georgia, and Croatia!
The competition itself was really fun but what I loved the most was making new friends, learning more about Kazakhstan’s rich culture and exploring Almaty, its old capital.
💡Fun Fact: Did you know that Алма (Alma) in Kazakh means Apple? And Алматы (Almaty) means the “father or apples”?
This trip was a really eye-opening one. Here are some of my main takeaways from the experience:
Friendships and Connections - I was so surprised by how fast one can connect with other people. In the week I was there, I was able to form some really strong friendships both with people from my country and also with some amazing people I met there. Even with the language barrier, we connected to such deep levels.
Authenticity - Once again I came to realize how important it is to show up as you. By staying true to who you are, you can really find “your people” and something that I understood is that the more yourself you are the better time you have.
Stories - One of my favorite things to do was to exchange stories with people and something that I realized is that it is truly mesmerizing how many stories a single person may hold.
🎧New Episodes with A Seat at the Table
What is an unconventional path and how does one embark on that journey? How can you discover your authentic self and become better at communication?
Those are all questions that we explore in the 2nd and 3rd episodes of A Seat at the Table!
In the 2nd episode, we talk with Jennah Dohms, mine and Sasha’s past director from the knowledge society! Jennah had been an amazing mentor for us throughout the past year and we were so happy to have her join us and share her story.
Listen to Jennah talk about her unconventional path and give advice on how one can achieve such a path! 👇
For the 3rd episode, we had the pleasure to talk with Dr. Shini Somara! Sasha and I loved watching her crash-course physics and engineering videos on YouTube and were so excited about this conversation!
Listen to Dr. Shini talk all about being your authentic self and much more! 👇
What’s up with Oasis? 💧
During the Summer, we decided to pivot.
In our initial design, we were planning to use MOF-303 as a water-capture material. However, after further research and meeting with experts in the fields, some concerns about the difficulty of containing the material and the final quality of the water were raised.
Long story short, we decided to change the material and use hydrogels instead!
Some more exciting updates:
Oasis is in the LOI Labs Batch 11 Cohort 🎉
Oasis placed 3rd in the Youth Impact Challenge 🙌
Next Step: Building and testing our prototype! So excited to see where this journey takes us :)
Coding 💻
For a while, I felt very intimidated to start learning how to code. This summer, I decided to let go of all my worries and negative thoughts, embrace the done>perfect mindset, and start!
I did Harvard’s CS50 Introductory Course to Python, which I really enjoyed because I had the chance to build small apps in the process of learning.
Having said that - I’m really excited to continue building my skills and alongside those a lot more cool projects :)
A Sneak Peek into September
What will I be up to the following month?
Start of Activate 🙌- Activate is the second-year program of TKS and I am so so excited to jump back in - reconnect with my old friends, meet new people, and work on impactful projects!
More Podcast Episodes🎙️- Sasha and I are very excited for the episodes to come! (hm I’m sensing something about intrapreneurship and access to STEM education - I guess you’ll have to wait to find out 😄)
Learning more about AI 🤖- For a while now I have wanted to dive deeper into the technology, learn the fundamentals of how it works, and build some projects with it!
And… that’s a wrap, see you next month!!
Until then,
Yesss Annie! ❤️
looks like you had so much fun in Kazakhstan!!