I woke up today at 5:00 a.m., jolted by the thought of my daughter’s problematic investigatory project in Science.

The whole afternoon last Sunday, she was fumbling with her experiment together with Kim, her groupmate. Too bad, the leader of her group, Pauline, is sick with dengue and is recovering at the hospital. Worse thing is - it was Pauline who conceptualized their subject, and she is the one who knows more about the abstract, etc.

So yesterday when she submitted the project, the teacher was not satisfied. When she got home in the afternoon, disappointment was etched all over my daughter’s face. Her group was told to conduct another experiment, a better one - where they can more clearly establish their theory on surface tension. Since the science fair in which they are required to exhibit their projects is scheduled today, there is not much time for them to do revisions. Oh, how I wish the teacher had set the submission a week earlier so the students can have ample time to make adjustments, etc.

Well, anyhow, as I write this post, my daughter is in the back of our house trying to figure out how to make a boat out of transparency and make it float in water, then observe its movements, etc… Sigh! I feel so useless not being able to help her as Physics is not my forte. I have decided to leave her alone. I am keeping my fingers crossed….. but oh.. only two hours before the fair???

Now, lesson to learn, I tell my daughter - doing investigatory projects is like doing a thesis. It takes time and the study is done not only in one sitting. Experiments have to be conducted over and over until you arrive at the desired results. And sometimes, it takes an accident or serendepity to arrive at solutions to scientific problems. But then again, they don’t come everyday and they don’t usually happen at a time when you are hoping, praying for miracles…