She is a student in the 10th grade at a traditional high school in Craiova, and last school year she qualified for the national stage at three school Olympiads. Linguistics is what brought him two international awards by the end of the summer.
Ana Teodora Grigorie is a student in the 10th grade, Mathematics-Informatics profile, at the “Carol I” National College in Craiova and has a passion that is not quite common among teenagers her age: Linguistics – a subject that is not usually studied at school. This discipline brought him two international awards in 2025: bronze at the Asia Pacific Linguistics Olympiad and mention at the International Linguistics Olympiad.
He got to deepen notions of phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics and decipher writing systems out of pure curiosity. “When the movie Avatar 2 came out, I saw that there was a fictional language, Na’vi, and I started to look beyond the words, to be interested in how it was invented. Then, the Romanian lady told us that there was a Linguistics Olympiad, which I had actually heard of and wanted to participate, so I participated for the first time in the 7th grade. The first problem I looked at was one of numbers, with totally different bases of numeration, and I can say that seemed very complicated to me. But then I discovered a book for preparing for the Olympiad that explained step by step how the problems should be solved. And I started to study from that book and solve problems given in other years at the Olympiad. And slowly I started to become passionate about this discipline.” Ana Grigorie spoke about the beginnings of her passion.
At the first participation, in the 7th grade, he got a mention at the national stage. In his second participation, in the 9th grade, in the 2024-2025 school year, he qualified for the international stage of the International Linguistics Olympiad, and his performance in the final competition, held in Taipei, Taiwan, earned him a mention.
She was drawn to Linguistics because it immediately made the connection with Mathematics, another subject she is in love with. “It’s very much about logic and finding patterns in problems. It’s actually about problem solving and algorithms,” to explain the student.
The experience of the competition in Taipei was amazing, Ana Grigorie described it.
“I learned a lot about their culture. And for me it was an experience that will always remain in my mind. We were also stressed about the results and the Olympics itself, but at the same time we made new friends from other countries, we learned a little bit about what their school is like or what they do there. I also learned about Taiwanese culture, as I said, and visited the city as well. It was a great experience,” summed up the student.
Performance in this discipline, as is the case in all international Olympiads, is achieved with a great deal of individual study. Students solve many problems, the competitions held in countries with tradition being a source of inspiration, just as the national stage of the Olympics in our country is among the top ones. “Children from other countries solve problems from our olympiad to prepare and we solve problems from their Olympics. That is, we can search on the net for the Olympics, for example, in the USA or the Olympics in Hong Kong, and we find there on their websites problems and we take them and solve them”Ana Grigorie specified how she proceeds to train.
The individual effort is complemented, close to the international Olympics, by training alongside the members of the national team.
“We have preparations with the team. Before the Olympics, we had a week of intensive training in Bucharest, where we solved problems, gave a simulation, we did both individual problems and problems for the team test. We also got to know each other, those in the team. And before this week, we had several online training sessions”. explained the student.
The most difficult thing in competitions of this level was to manage his emotions. “In the end I somehow learned to manage them, but before I felt like I was getting overwhelmed. And I realized that when I put a lot of pressure on myself I didn’t get the results I wanted, and when I didn’t put any pressure on myself, I even got results I didn’t expect”said Ana Grigorie.
With each competition, the control increases, but the pressure also increases, because he wants to achieve better results from one year to the next.
But the great satisfaction comes not from diplomas and awards, but from the fact that each problem brings something new. “No problem is the same. It’s always like a game. I have to discover either a phenomenon or a thing in the culture of that language that influences the language. And by putting the puzzle pieces together, that’s how the problem is solved,” he explained the student.
Also passionate about athletics and photography
In the 9th grade, Ana Grigorie participated in five school Olympiads, and in three of them she qualified for the national stage: Informatics (in which she obtained the third place), Chemistry and Linguistics. Although these competitions require an effort far beyond what it means to study a subject in class, Ana still has time for other passions.
“I have been practicing performance athletics for a long time. In my spare time I like to read, watch movies and I am passionate about photography. I also participate in athletics competitions. I am not among the first places, but I participate because it seems to me that movement is very important to have a healthy mind as well”, the teenager who represents the Craiova Municipal Sports Club in sports competitions is convinced.
And if movement helps her maintain her health, reading and photography relax her and allow her to develop her imagination and be creative.
Since last year, the teenager has enrolled in photography courses at the Popular Arts School. “I really want to enter a competition or submit pictures to local galleries. For now we are still learning how to be creative and how to find details and beautiful things“, revealed the teenager.
Until recently he liked to take photos with his phone, now he prefers the camera that he can set up and get much better results. She is passionate about details, which she seeks to immortalize regardless of whether she has a building, a ladybug or a leaf in front of her, so that outings in nature now have another purpose.
Engineering or research, the fields he sees himself exploring in the future
When thinking about the future, she looks for fields that bring together all the disciplines she is currently passionate about.
“I kept thinking, because at the same time I was also in the Mathematics Olympiad and in Chemistry, and I kept thinking where all these disciplines come together. And I realized that, even if I’m not going to do, for example, something in the linguistic field in the future, or in chemistry, the logic I developed and creative thinking will still help me. So I was thinking of studying physics or aerospace engineering next because I like studying outer space and reading books about it,” revealed the student.
It is still not very clear to him whether he will apply to study in the country or abroad, he feels that he still has time to make a decision. And if she goes to study abroad, she says that her intention is to return. “I grew up here and I like this country a lot”, said Ana Grigorie with conviction.
“The “Carol I” National College is really the place where I grew up”
She has been a student of the “Carol I” National College in Craiova since her first year of school.
“It’s where I really grew up. I have been there since 5 years and 9 months. And I don’t know if I would have had the same performance in another high school, but I know that my high school helped me a lot to develop because the teachers here supported me a lot. Many international Olympians came from “Carol” and somehow that made me ambitious to want to reach an international stage”, Ana Grigorie testified.
The school is under renovation and many things still cannot go as the students and teachers would like, but the student says that, despite the fact that they do not currently have Chemistry or Physics laboratories, the teachers have found solutions for various experiments and demonstrations.
“For example, in Physics, our teacher also tried to do experiments in the classroom, which were quite successful and very interesting. In Chemistry, when we were preparing for the Olympiad, we were able to prepare in the laboratories of the High School of Chemistry or the Faculty of Chemistry. Solutions have been found”, added the student.
He urges colleagues who want to perform to not be afraid to ask questions, to be curious, to ask for advice and to trust in their own strengths. “Let them never think that they are not good enough to make it to the international Olympics, because I believe that if they have the ambition, anyone can perform, as long as they prepare and really want to.”said the student.
Ana Grigorie’s colleagues are, moreover, all engaged in school competitions.
“In Chemistry this year, there are six children who are preparing, because starting organic chemistry and being a completely new subject, more children, both those who want to study Medicine and those who don’t, have started to prepare. In Mathematics, in the same way, there are four children in the class who are preparing and this helps me because I know that I can prepare with someone and also, when I have doubts, I can ask the teacher, but I can also ask a colleague what he thinks about a specific problem, let’s brainstorm and work it out. This year almost everyone started to choose at least one Olympics to participate in”the student also revealed.
What she would like – and for now she has not found in the school’s offer – would be to have the chance to take courses that would also prepare her for what comes after high school. “I would really like to have a discipline that would develop our public speaking, because I think that would help us a lot now and in the future. (…) It’s a debating club, but somehow I would like it to be a discipline at school where we can be more creative, not necessarily just discuss pros and cons. For example, I understood that in the 11th grade a drama subject would be introduced, which I thought was very interesting, because we could be creative at the same time and learn to speak in front of an audience and express ourselves correctly”, said the student.
For Ana Teodora Grigorie, a period begins now in which she makes her plans for future competitions. In the 9th grade, he tried his hand at five Olympiads – Mathematics, Informatics, Chemistry, German and Linguistics -, but for the 10th grade he is thinking “only at three”: Linguistics, Mathematics and Chemistry.
He still enjoys the season that gives him time to relax, because he knows that winter and spring will be periods of intense study.
“I say this, that autumn is my season to go outside, to relax, and after that in winter and spring I start to enter, little by little, into the rhythm of competition. And this summer I stayed, I prepared, the Olympics being at the end of July, and August was a free month. So in winter, spring and part of the summer I prepare for the Olympics, and in autumn I relax and from now on I start to enter, little by little, during the preparation period”, the student also specified.
