For Arlington Heights spell-master, it's on to chemistry challenge
Less than a week after tying for second place in the 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee, eighth grader Adrian Gunawan enjoyed a rare day off from studying.
On Wednesday, he and his classmates from South Middle School in Arlington Heights enjoyed a field day at nearby Pioneer Park, before attending their graduation at Rolling Meadows High School that night.
On Thursday, however, the brief holiday is over. Adrian will resume studying, this time preparing for the national finals of "You Be the Chemist Challenge," sponsored by the Chemical Educational Foundation. It takes place Wednesday in Philadelphia.
Last spring, Gunawan placed second in the Schaumburg regional, advancing him to the state competition, which he won.
Asked whether he prefers spelling or chemistry, he deftly dodges the question, saying: "They're both pretty good. They're both pretty useful."
Gunawan spent all of last week in Washington D.C. for the National Spelling Bee. The semifinals and finals aired live Friday on ESPN and ABC, respectively, making him something of a national celebrity.
In fact, since returning his family has fielded calls from local TV stations for interviews, as well as ComEd, which sponsored his trip.
But while in the nation's capital, he didn't do much sightseeing.
"I spent the whole time in my hotel room studying," says Gunawan, who was born in Indonesia and came here at the age of 2. "The last time I did more sightseeing, but I was eliminated early, so I had more time. This time I didn't want to take any chances."
Gunawan first made the national bee in sixth grade, when he lived in Chicago and represented the Chicago Public Schools. When he and his family moved to Arlington Heights two years ago, South Middle School officials began participating in the spelling series, because of his interest.
"We knew he wanted to get back to nationals, and we wanted to help make that happen," says Principal Linda Klobucher.
Ironically, in seventh grade Gunawan failed to win his classroom bee, let alone win the school contest. With that, he resolved to intensify his studying.
Gunawan pored over not only the "Spell It" list provided by Scripps, but he downloaded a longer consolidated word list from the National Spelling Bee website, that included 23,000 words.
"It took a long time to get through that list," he says.
He carried the lists around with him in a binder, to make the use of any spare time to study. As the competitions intensified he studied two to four hours a day.
Most words are derived from other languages, driving Gunawan to learn common patterns. Latin derivatives often use a "C" while Eastern European and Asian language patterns use "K."
"Thirty percent of the English language is derived from Latin," he says, "so it helps to know Latin patterns."
In the end, it didn't help him with his final word, terribilita. The art term uses both Latin and Italian origins, but he drew a blank when he first heard it.
"I'm usually pretty decent keeping my nervousness down," Gunawan says. "I take a deep breath and try to block everything out.
"But I guess I was pretty nervous with that one," he adds. "I thought it started with 'tera' or 'terri,' and I just said 'terabilata,' which was wrong. I misspelled it badly."
In the end, though, he didn't do badly. He and the two other runners-up split the $15,000 second place prize money and he has a national championship runner-up title to show for it.