Victoria Zhang from the 11th-grade class received the national 1st place in the 2021 Geothon-Academic Marathon in Geography. The International Academic Marathon (IAM) is an event aimed to bring the spirit of marathons to academic learning. Just like “marathon running”, IAM holds similar virtues of pushing people to their limits and beyond, both physically and mentally. IAM challenges students academically and intelligently at a new high level. Students need to gain fresh knowledge and consume a massive amount of new information within long testing hours. Through such a challenge, students will greatly expand their potential and significantly improve their concentration, perseverance, endurance, and academic strength.

With her passion and obsession to the subject of geography,Victoriasigned up for the competition. As the only contestant from SHSID in Geothon, she scored three 1st-place finishes and one 3rd-place finish in the four sessions, and won 1st place in the national final with a total score well ahead of the rest of the pack. After the competition, she expressed her great thanks to SHSID’s leading and comprehensive education, which has improved her reading comprehension capability, logical analysis, and problem-solving skills by leaps and bounds. All these had laid a solid foundation for her to win the competition. Moreover, she expressed her great appreciation to all the teachers who taught her geography, including Ms. Yang Meng, Mr. Dustin Sharp, Dr. Victoria Cooper, Mr. Jason Sonnefeldt, and Ms. Shi Chengcheng. She said that it is their profound knowledge, vivid inspiration, and continuous encouragement that made her journey to this achievement.

This competition also made her realize that learning is a marathon, not a sprint. In order to be the final winner, you need to have a heartfelt love for the subject, have sufficient confidence in yourself, and have scientific methods and firm perseverance in the learning process. She also hopes that she can keep up the momentum and her hardworking academic and work ethic towards a good result in the global finals.

(Written by Shengyan Zhang Pictures from Academic Marathon official release Supervised by Meng Yang, Shen Zhou Reviewed by Qian Zuo)