Thalia, Gold medal winner of OSN Geography 2015 in Yogyakarta.

Short Information about Thalia

Name    : Thalia Salsalbilla
School  : 8 Senior High School Jakarta
Age       : 16 years old
Address: Tebet, South Jakarta

Assalamualaikum, Thalia. Where school do you go?

Walaikumsalam, 8 Senior High School Jakarta.

I've heard that you win gold in OSN, congratulations! How many student participant in this OSN, especially in Geography?

Thanks a lot! 75 participant. 

How many medal are contested?

30, 5 Gold, 10 Silver, and 15 Bronze

If i may ask, may you tell us about how competition held?

The competitions are held from school round, municipality round, pre-province round, province round, and national round. There were only multiple choices and fill-in-the-blank questions from school to province round. But when it comes to national round, the tests were vary! There were written test, multimedia test, laboratory practical test and fieldwork test.

The national olympiad was held in Jogja from 18 to 24 of May 2015, but the tests themselves only took two days to be completed. So my friends and i could spend the rest of our stay in Jogja to do some final preparations before our test, and definitely do some sightseeing and shopping. 

The written and multimedia tests were not very difficult i guess, since my friends and i did a lot of preparations including researches and brainstorms. The practical laboratory test was all about satellite image, one of the essential things in geography, testing our skills about interpreting the image, observing the landuse change, measuring compass degrees, slope, and so on.
The fieldwork test was so much more challenging! It took place on five different locations around the famous Parangtritis beach, which are Depok Beach, Depok Village, the sand dunes, a construction site on a cliff that gave us a bare look of the soil horizons, and the Coastal Geospatial Laboratory of Parangtritis.

That's awesome! Can you share us about how you learn geography?
I feel blessed and fortunate to be a student of sman 8 jakarta which took special care to olympiad students and provide us with permissions to skip class, olympiad books, rooms for studying, and im very lucky to have kind tutors who were willing to teach.
And i did a lot of reading, because geography materials are so abundant i myself never feel enough. I also did much researches on the internet about geography things, past year questions, and asking the experienced ones.After i read and understand the essential concept, i feel easy doing all kinds of geography questions, whether multiple choice, essay, or even practical and fieldwork test.

Great! Is there any messages for anyone reading this?
I'm proud to say geography is one thing people should learn comprehensively, moreover there are several global issues related to geography, like climate change, global warming, or the local issues like southeast asian free trade, demography problems, transportation and infrastructure problems and so on. Geography makes us easier to understand and overcome these issues or problems. So for the ones who are interested in geography olympiads, you should care about your environment, following latest trends and issues, besides memorizing your atlas and textbook. The source of learning geography is uncountable, you can read boring textbooks, colorful atlas, educational tv shows, morning newspapers, or watch movies. Though the material are very abundant, you can spend everyday reading little by little, so you wont be exhausted (and the memories last longer this way, i suppose). And never give up! Ask the experienced ones, learn from them, ask questions for them. Im sure they'd be glad to help, especially if you show deep curiosity and high passion.

Thanks Thalia for the interview!