Maryville High School senior earns multiple medals at International History Olympiad

Maryville High School senior earns multiple medals at International History Olympiad

By: Amy Beth Miller at the Daily Times

August 16, 2022

A spark ignited by Maryville teachers and fueled by books from both his grandfather in India and the public library took Adithya Madduri to the International History Olympiad last month, where he earned nine medals and third place in the Varsity division.

The Maryville High School senior enjoys reading but credits his fourth grade teacher at Coulter Grove Intermediate School, Lori Graumann, with steering his interest in the past.

“She exposed me to a lot of different resources to learn history,” Adi said, from “Liberty’s Kids” videos to books about George Washington, his battles and his spies during the American Revolution.

Graumann gave the students a list of books to read about the topics they would study during the school year. “He finished that list before Christmas,” said Adi’s mother, Anna Rayasam.

Reading a book such as “Undaunted Courage” piqued his interest in learning more about the facts behind the story, in that case about the Lewis and Clark expedition. “That’s how I got into reading more nonfiction,” he said.

When the family visited Hyderabad, India, in the summer, Adi’s grandfather would buy big books for him of history from different countries. One covered the history of India from about 2000 B.C. to the 1980s. “I spent that entire summer reading that book and looking up different parts of the book that really spoke to what I was interested in,” Adi said.

By sixth grade he was competing in the History Bee and Bowl and became state champion, a position he’s held since. “I had another great history teacher named Mr. Miller,” Adi said, and broadening his study to different historic civilizations gave him additional perspective.

Across multiple subject areas, Adi said, his Maryville teachers “sparked my passion for learning.”

“I would go to the Blount County library and pick up different history books and textbooks,” he said, a practice that continued through this past summer, when wasn’t volunteering with the summer school program at Sam Houston Elementary or other community activities. “If I ever found a term that I didn’t know I would look it up and try to learn as much as I could about it.”

Adi also credits his Advance Placement U.S. History and AP European History teacher, Alex Oldham, with some of his success at the history olympiad. “He brought those classes to life,” Adi said. “Those classes really prepared me for the competition. From there I just had to put in a little bit more effort and use what I learned from the previous competitions.”

This year a regional competition in Chattanooga in January qualified Adi to compete at the national level in April in Washington, D.C. He made it to the semifinals there, qualifying him for the international event.

Among the 31 who registered for the Varsity division this year were students from not only the United States and Canada but also Ecuador, Australia, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Switzerland and Kazakhstan.

The weeklong competition at the end of July in Princeton, New Jersey, and New York City, included the quick fire “bee and bowl” events, punching in with a buzzer, exams and essays. Adi earned a gold, two silver and six bronze medals.

The olympiad included four 100-question multiple choice exams over two hours covering different regions of the world. “From reading the books and the textbooks at the library, I think I have a very good general knowledge of a lot of different countries,” Adi said. “Even if I don’t know of an exact historical event or person, I can kind of surmise it based on the clues in the question.”

That was followed by two written exams. At Princeton University he had about five questions with four prompts each and one long essay question. For example, one question asked about the legacy of the Roman republic influencing our culture today.

The final exam was two long essays. One was about the sense of American unity before the revolution, something Adi said Oldham talked about for almost an entire class.

Adi’s essay writing earned him the gold medal in Historiography.

While most of the competitions are individual, he was placed on a team with students from Indiana and Alabama for the Hextathlon, with challenges such as identifying all the provinces of the Soviet Union and identifying a historic event from radio clips. “I think that was one of the most fun events,” he said.

One of his silver medals was for the Visual History Bee, identifying a person or event based on a series of pictures. “One thing I always do when I look up a historical term is I always want to see what this person looked like or what this event looked like, so I always go on Google Images and look at it,” he said.

Topics covered in the various events ranged from scientists and their discoveries to the historical context behind the current conflict with Russia and Ukraine.

The finals for the Aerospace History Bee, and the closing ceremony for the event, were on the USS Intrepid.

“My biggest takeaway from the International History Olympiad is there’s always so much to learn,” Adi said. “Even the top of the top students there, they don’t know everything.”

In addition to reading library books and looking at Wikipedia, and videos from the History Channel and YouTube, Adi prepared for the exam competitions by reading older questions online and looking up the words he didn’t understand.

History isn’t his only interest. He plays tennis, is president of the science club at the high school, serves on the student council and participates in the Model UN, an activity where his knowledge of history is an advantage.

After high school he’s considering a double major in bioengineering and government and policy. “Through Model UN as well as student council I’ve seen that I can take my knowledge of history and apply that to solve modern issues,” Adi said.

“The coolest thing about history is that it shows us how we’ve gotten here and what we’ve had to overcome to get to the position that we’re in right now, and it also provides us with a framework to solve our own problems we’re in today,” he said. “A lot of the problems that we face today aren’t brand new or unique.”