School Competition 3rd place
Back in 2019, my school organized a "Science Fair," contrary to the title, it included various competitions like speed cubing, essay contests, and science projects. I opted for the geography diorama competition, where we had to recreate world monuments using common supplies. I particularly liked it because it relied on creativity rather than academic knowledge.
Even though it was a group competition, my teammates were only there to avoid a grade deduction for not participating. Meaning that I had to work on the entire project myself. Regardless, I embraced the challenge and overcame the hurdle caused by it.
The school asked teams participating in geography diorama to bring their project before the weekend as assessing projects from all competitions on the same day may be hectic. I did as I was asked, but most groups didn't comply because they wanted to keep their work hidden from the competition in case the school decided not to evaluate that day. Consequently, the screening couldn't be done that day due to lack of cooperation.
Meaning that my entire project had been leaked. And on the day of the competition, I found out that my primary competitors took full advantage of that fact by scrapping their initial idea and making a new project entirely. I got confirmation when some of their teammates confessed to have changed their projects to meticulously outperform mine.
As a result, I ended up in 3rd place, which wasn't bad but I wasn't entirely happy with the outcome. Nonetheless, I learned a few valuable lessons from the experience, and overall, it was still an interesting and fun journey.