LYNNFIELD — After a great showing last year at the National Geography Bee, where Lynnfield Middle School student Kabir Bhatia made it to the quarterfinals, the now-eighth grader will be making a return this year.
Bhatia is not only the only student from Lynnfield Public Schools to make it to the national bee this year, but also came in second at the regional round.
Bhatia noted that nationals will take place from May 21 to 24 in Orlando.
“I study for at least one to two hours a day. I look at the countries, their physical features, landmarks, cities, and their cultures,” he said when talking about how he prepares for the competition.
Bhatia said competing is fun for him, especially in that kind of environment, because he knows how well he can do.
“Making it to nationals wasn’t that hard, but I got excited because I got second in regionals,” he said. “Another exciting thing was the buzzers because each round they’d ask a question, and when you knew it, you had to quickly press the buzzer and answer. You would really want to buzz first, and that was fun.”
Bhatia said that while he prepared similarly to last year, he studied more deeply this time around.
“There’s past questions on their website, and I looked at more of those this year which helped a lot,” he said.
When asked what advice he might give another kid who would want to take part in the Geography Bee, he said that once you study something, you should always revisit it and learn it the next day.
“I didn’t do that last year, and then I would always be like, ‘Oh, I knew that,’ but someone else would get it first, and I wouldn’t remember,” he said.
Bhatia said that in sixth grade he had gotten first in his class in the Lynnfield Middle School Geography Bee, and when he spoke with his mom, she had said that they should study a bit for it.
“We had two weeks to prepare so we didn’t do much. When I got to the school round I got out in the first round because I didn’t know the U.S. capitals. We didn’t know that we had to do that. Then the next year, I remembered that was going to happen again, and my mom and I didn’t really know much about the world and wanted to learn more together,” he said.
This year, Bhatia’s goal is to make it past the quarterfinals and try to make it to the semifinals or finals.
