Meeting James Watson, best day of your life. VTech Supplement

My heart thudded rapidly as the head of the science department at my school called me outside for a "little chat." It's always a frightening experience whenever a teacher calls you out to talk about something; however, she wanted to give me some good news. I was one of the two students who were selected to attend the Holiday Lectures at Howard Hughes Medical Institute about the Era in Genomics. I was elated as I would get to hear from two of the top scientists in the nation: Christopher Walsh and Charles Sawyers.

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Kumar, have you given any thought to lessening the story about the trip to the event place and instead discussing more about what transpired during the event? If you speak more about what you heard, learned, and shared during that day, leading up to meeting James Watson, you may be able to create a more effective conclusion for yourself. We are talking about the best day of your life so you should concentrate on the events of the day itself instead of giving us the back story in such a lengthy manner. Don't even tell us about the bus ride. Just talk about what transpired at the event for you. Try to elaborate about the meeting that you had with M.r. Watson. Explain what it felt like for you and why that meeting has to be the best day of your life (so far). By lessening the back story and concentrating on just the event you will find that the word count will immediately be cut to almost half of the requirement :-)

I have improved it a little but it's still over the word limit at 286. Please break this one down.
I was one of the two students from John Champe High School who were selected to attend the Holiday Lectures at Howard Hughes Medical Institute about the Era in Genomics. I was elated as I would get to hear from two of the top scientists in the nation: Christopher Walsh and Charles Sawyers. These lectures were focused on how advances in genomics are helping to get a better understanding of diseases such as cancer and how treatments are rapidly improving. As the 20 Loudoun County students were entering the building on December 6th, 2013, everyone was discussing about rumors on how James Watson, the prominent co-founder of the DNA structure, was going to be speaking lectures. Through the entire day, I was only focused on when James Watson would be speaking; we later learned that students would get a chance to have a Q&A with him for about 45 minutes. When the time came, I finally got to ask my question, "What is some advice that you would give to high school students?" He gave a very cliche answer, but an answer that has stuck to me even though I have probably heard it a numerous amount of times; he said to "Never give up. Always keep trying and you will get what you want." Words coming from a Nobel Prize Winner mean something different and they're worth a lot more. Later, I even got a chance to personally talk to him for about a minute and get his autobiography signed by him. It was an overwhelming experience as I was talking to someone we had only learned about in biology books and profoundly looked up to for his work in the Human Genome Project.

I edited the paper by deleting some sentences and rewording a few as well. This is now down to 223 words. I hope this version works for you :-)

I was one of the two students from John Champe High School who were selected to attend the Holiday Lectures at Howard Hughes Medical Institute about the Era in Genomics. These lectures were focused on how advances in genomics are helping to get a better understanding of diseases such as cancer and how treatments are rapidly improving. There were rumors that James Watson, the prominent co-founder of the DNA structure, was going to be speaking lectures. We later learned that students would get a chance to have a Q&A with him for about 45 minutes. When the time came, I finally got to ask my question, "What is some advice that you would give to high school students?" He gave a very cliche answer, but an answer that has stuck with me even though I have probably heard it numerous times; he said to "Never give up. Always keep trying and you will get what you want." Words coming from a Nobel Prize Winner mean something a lot more. Later, I even got a chance to personally talk to him for about a minute and get his autobiography signed by him. It was an overwhelming experience as I was talking to someone we had only learned about in biology books and profoundly looked up to for his work in the Human Genome Project.