Poorly Run Event Stories

[sciencepeeps]

I don't know if somebody already said this because it was a while ago, but in Wright State they once didn't have enough topo maps. So, everyone got the map for only 15 minutes, except for the last group of teams which got it for 20 minutes (because it didn't even out correctly)

[Trumpets]

So there was this one time where the proctor just copied questions out of an AP review book. The best part of it was that I owned the exact same review book he copied out of.

[whyiamafool]

I have an interesting story.

I had my regionals yesterday and went to Optics, and upon arrival (right before the event started), the Div C was still working on their test. So I assumed there must have been a delay, so I waited... and waited. They finally let us in 10 minutes after, and my partner and I started the test. Then, we went up to the LSS, and placed our templates in the box. Problem was, that the box was not to parameters and we had to fold our templates in many different ways, and we eventually got our mirrors to do something.

It was the first time this school was running this event, so I don't blame them for everything, cause this was their First Attempt In Learning how to run this event. I'm very sure that next time that they will look at the rules more carefully.

Whyiamafool

[321Kaboom]

During my first year st SO, I had WIDI as one of my events. At my second or third invitational, the proctor was running late, and when he got here, he realized he didn't have the key to the room. We had to wait another 10 minutes to get a key from a janitor, who then unlocked the door for us. When we got in the room, the proctor decided to give us full time to be fair, seems like a good idea? No. There were multiple kids who needed to go to an event right after, and they had their time cut by like 10 minutes. At every other invitational, they had structures for everybody to look at, but at this one, the proctor only had one and it was at the front of the room on a desk. The proctor only allowed 2 kids to come up at once to look at it for like 2 minutes, and we had to remember what it looked like, until we asked to go up again.
After the event was over, my partner told me after that the proctor, while handing out materials, said ,"Oh sorry if you all don't have the same things, I was putting it together while I was watching TV." And someone asked him, "Um, I don't have a yellow toothpick." He then replied, "Oh, color doesn't matter." Normally that would, so we were all appalled.
When we got the results back, and the grading rubric, it was very brief, it said stuff like, Dot on bottom of cup, it wasn't specific at all. And it said, 3 toothpicks on side of plate, we were shocked, because basically everyone got points for it, and it was really was just a poorly run event.

[Eggo]

This was not the event sups fault completely, but 3 meters ahead of the finish tape for scrambler, there was a wall. This was at my recent invite. (The whole room was only like 15m wide). One unfortunate scrambler never stopped. That egg made a really nice cushion.

Isn't Scrambler supposed to have a wall? There should have been some kind of terminal barrier, unless the rules have changed.

[NeilMehta]

This was not the event sups fault completely, but 3 meters ahead of the finish tape for scrambler, there was a wall. This was at my recent invite. (The whole room was only like 15m wide). One unfortunate scrambler never stopped. That egg made a really nice cushion.

Isn't Scrambler supposed to have a wall? There should have been some kind of terminal barrier, unless the rules have changed.

(I mean, if the tape was 25.0 cm thick then it would all be ok)

[Unome]

PRES time! (which I really shouldn't be excited about, but hopefully my comments will help some aspiring event supervisors). From Georgia Div C State at Emory this past weekend:

Microbe Mission (1st): The test had a good balance of question difficulty and topic focus. However, it was far too short; only 25 multiple choice/matching/one-line, and 3 free response. It could definitely have benefited from being around three times as long as it was. Overall 6/10.

Write It Do It (10th): For the most part the event supervisors seemed to have a decent grasp of the event; the model wasn't prone to falling over or general collapse, and all of the pieces were attached to each other. However, the model was far too easy; we finished in 10th with 56 points out of a possible 62. Overall 7/10 could have been worse.

Remote Sensing (1st): Firstly, this test was a total 23 questions long; 18 multiple choice questions and 5 "define the abbreviation." As with Microbes, the test should have been much longer; 70 questions would have been a better number. Additionally, although several of the problems involved math, for every single one of them the problem spelled out the exact equation to use and defined every element of the formula before giving data that could be plugged into a calculator by a 6th grader (I know this because I taught 6th graders to do exactly this during the 2015 season). I guess the only good thing I can say is that the questions focused on the topic area well. Our regionals test was much better (shoutout to the guy from UNG-Dahlonega who wrote that test!). Overall 5/10.

Dynamic Planet (2nd): Probably the only good-quality test I took at state this year. The test was nine multi-part free-response questions, at a rather basic level but generally designed to make us think. The only problem I can think of was a diagram of a convergent boundary that contained two locations for lithosphere and none for either subduction zone or trench (there was one location that could have been either of them, but the question told us to use both). Still probably could have been a little longer - we finished at 40 minutes and a few(high-placing) teams finished before us - but it wasn't too bad. Overall 8/10.

Astronomy (1st): The test was 35 multiple choice questions (done by ZipGrade, which, thanks to my experience grading multiple choice, I can say with certainty was totally unnecessary and likely introduced significant error; 35 MC should take no more than 2 minutes per test, and the ES had several helpers), 3-5 free-response math questions of moderate difficulty (I can't remember exactly how many), and 3 tiebreaker questions which, although somewhat justifiable on the basis that we're allowed laptops, were rather irrelevant (e.g. the nationality of Ejnar Hertzsprung and the father of Castor). Overall 6/10 still better than last year's test...

[Skink]

Microbe Mission (1st): The test had a good balance of question difficulty and topic focus. However, it was far too short; only 25 multiple choice/matching/one-line, and 3 free response. It could definitely have benefited from being around three times as long as it was. Overall 6/10.

No lab work? Yikes.

[fast__facts]

One time our Food Science proctor had a ruler but it had that little nub in front of the 0 mark so she went searching for another one. By the time she didn't find one our tower was gone. It was great.

[Avogadro]

I haven't posted on this thread yet this year but I've run into some... questionable... circumstances. Some of these aren't as bad as others on this thread, but they merit mentioning as a warning to anyone who might supervise an event if nothing else.

1. Islip Invite Chem Lab. The lab was a tiebreaker. The... entire lab. In the event known as Chem LAB. Was a tiebreaker. Need I say more? Also, the test had the nitrogen cycle, for some reason, event though I couldn't find anything on the rules to support that. Fortunately they were lenient when scoring that section.
2. Islip Invite MatSci. I think that almost literally all of the questions on the test were from the test exchange. There was one question that I wouldn't normally have known the answer to that was worth several points, but I had looked at the test it was stolen from two nights before so knew exactly what was necessary even though I didn't have full comprehension of it. Disappointing to say the least.
3. Conestoga Invite Optics. Probably has more to do with how the schedule worked out, but they couldn't fit in everybody's LS in the time slot. Thus, my partner had to leave to go to her next event (which she was about 20 seconds away from being late for thanks to the delay at Optics), and I ended up doing the LS on my own, which wasn't ideal. The supervisor was kind and ended up being a little bit lenient with the scoring, which was appreciated, but I still would have much preferred having my partner for that.
4. Conestoga MatSci. Had issues with running out of materials for the labs, and a lot of the various questions didn't have much of a basis in the rules if any. Overall, still acceptable since most of it was at least reasonable to attempt to figure out, but it seems like a little more attention to detail could have helped out a lot.
5. Regionals MatSci. No lab. Given how PA is running their Regionals competitions this year, I can understand why they didn't have a lab, but it was still really disappointing seeing as our team has tended to earn a significantly greater proportion of points on the lab as opposed to the other sections.

Overall, most of these events ended up being "fine", but they don't really live up to the spirit of the event or what it could be.