Poorly Run Event Stories

[hscmom]

OK, four kids in SO since Sept 2007 so we've been to quite a few tourneys. Here are a few:

1) Ex Des: Student tables are encircling a plastic kiddy pool with a few live turtles and some plastic frogs. Kids threatened with penalty if they got within 3 feet of the set up - no touching. So, nothing to manipulate or do. Some of the kids from a different region were commenting, "Ha ha, just like our regionals."
2) Metric: Proctor miffed that kids didn't bring pencils (she didn't have enough to go around - rules prohibit pencils). Kids didn't measure the same things they estimated. Showed them a tiny photo of a in-ground swimming pool an asked them to estimate volume. Didn't have enough stations so several stations were empty "brain break" stations.
3) Robocross: board similar to what was in rules but with twice-as-tall and twice-as-thick barrier than the rules specified around Zone D. Smaller robots couldn't enter Zone D.
4) Robot arm: Supervisor decided to enforce a regional rule from the region he just supervised (those kids knew the rule, other regions, nope).
5) Solar System: Supervisor had each pair come up and do an impromptu speech regarding some rocket propulsion topic (I think...). Didn't work well with the introverted kids who know their planets but don't speak well in front of strangers (or understand rocketry), and was an interruption to the test takers who just wanted silence during the test.
6) WIDI: Structure so easy that pretty much every team nailed it. It was a foam cup with a few toothpicks, most builders left early - and within the same two minute window. The supervisor had to use a ruler and protractor to break ties and was late turning in results for the awards ceremony due to this.

The thing is, these supervisors, for the most part don't want to disrespect the students, but that's the end effect. Students spend so much time, energy, and money prepping for the event as described in the rules and training handout (that's all they got really...) and are given something so totally different ... or poorly thought out ... that the scores end up being quite random and can change who advances...

[Moxyfinkle]

Last year at regionals some stupid proctors thought Rotor was about the fastest drop speed so we had all these teams with 1 second times medaling. Then our rival school got first but there was a scoring mistake so we had to switch trophies in an awkward hand-off. It was an interesting tournament, to say the least. And I haven't even got started on the Sci-Cri test... They gave us the answers to the unknowns for qualitative analyisis:(

[Gemma W]

How about the B Nationals food sci test where they made us write a cupcake recipe scaled down to a single cupcake...and then actually bake the cupcake, with tiny containers of ingredients and no measuring spoons. Eggs, of course, can't really be scaled down past their usual unit. Of course, at the same time we were also supposed to be answering a short-answer test, and then after the 20 minutes they gave us for the cupcake we went to stations, they told us to wait to start and then never actually told us to start, then several stations were missing their information, and then at the very end they were like oh yeah by the way there's a fifty question MC test that you should have been working on in between everything else. So that didn't really happen.

Fun times.

[samlan16]

How about the B Nationals food sci test where they made us write a cupcake recipe scaled down to a single cupcake...and then actually bake the cupcake, with tiny containers of ingredients and no measuring spoons. Eggs, of course, can't really be scaled down past their usual unit. Of course, at the same time we were also supposed to be answering a short-answer test, and then after the 20 minutes they gave us for the cupcake we went to stations, they told us to wait to start and then never actually told us to start, then several stations were missing their information, and then at the very end they were like oh yeah by the way there's a fifty question MC test that you should have been working on in between everything else. So that didn't really happen.

Fun times.

Hmm, sounds like WSU 2012 as well. And let's not forget the Food Science test at Nationals that year when they tried to make us find the density of a piece of bread with a ruler and a cookie cutter, not a scale!

[Catie314]

1) My first year in Science Olympiad, at my very first tournament, my partner and I practically had to teach the proctor how to run boomilevers.
2) The same tournament, one test took only ten minutes for my partner and I to complete.
3) The materials science test that year was actually a chem lab test, which was bad for the girls on that event. And at last year's state competition, the Materials science test was just off the wiki, too.

[hscmom]

It's pretty bad when you can read someone's comment about Material Science and realize who the person is that just posted that. Congrats on your invitational medals two days ago. That machine test must've been written by someone slightly sadistic...

[Panda Weasley]

3) The materials science test that year was actually a chem lab test, which was bad for the girls on that event. And at last year's state competition, the Materials science test was just off the wiki, too.

This may just be because I'm reading this out of context, but do you mean that girls can't do chem lab? Or were the people on your team doing materials science girls?

[Unome]

3) The materials science test that year was actually a chem lab test, which was bad for the girls on that event. And at last year's state competition, the Materials science test was just off the wiki, too.

This may just be because I'm reading this out of context, but do you mean that girls can't do chem lab? Or were the people on your team doing materials science girls?

Perhaps Materials Science doesn't have a rule about long hair? (I haven't read the rules; this is just speculation).

[samlan16]

3) The materials science test that year was actually a chem lab test, which was bad for the girls on that event. And at last year's state competition, the Materials science test was just off the wiki, too.

This may just be because I'm reading this out of context, but do you mean that girls can't do chem lab? Or were the people on your team doing materials science girls?

Perhaps Materials Science doesn't have a rule about long hair? (I haven't read the rules; this is just speculation).

Yeah, let's just assume that and move on. I don't want to deal with someone indoctrinated with chauvinist sexism either.

[hscmom]

It was two girls doing chem lab that year. She was referring to that.