Poorly Run Event Stories

[LittyWap]

I am from the Southwest PA region. There I have done Crime Busters for the past 3 years. Every time it has been the same proctor. All of the items they give are in good condition (Iodine, HCl, Water, etc) and they have enough evidence. But that is it for the good. They give these bags of hair and ask what they are without giving a microscope or a flame to test. Also, they have given the exact same test for the past 3+ years without a single change to the answers or physical evidence. I will say this region has a history of this but of what I know, this is among the worst in PA. This is my last year in Div B but I bet the test will be the same next year.

[maxxxxx]

Since the season is over I'll discuss all of the poorly run events I've competed in this year.

Battle of Valley Forge/Conestoga
Robot Arm: Although I didn't compete, I watched my team's runs and noticed a big problem. None of the supervisors were watching my team's first scored run so there was no one to stop the run when the robot left the box, so we got an extra ~1 minute of "illegal" run time.

Tiger Invitational

Invasive Species(6): The ES just reused exact slides from last year's States and Regionals tests - copies of which just happened to be given to each team that attended the PA coaches clinic this year - with 3 or 4 original slides. We brought the National list binder instead but I was able to remember a lot of answers from last year, so we didn't do as badly as we should have with the wrong binder.

Wind Power(13): It wasn't terrible, but they enforced the old 5cm distance rule and they didn't tell us our voltage immediately after each test. Again, this wasn't that bad, it's just annoying that a state ES doesn't know the current rules.

SOUP

Wind Power(6): Very poorly run build portion which I've already touched on here

Southeast PA Regionals

Robot Arm(9): They took waaaayyy too long to set up. Our timeslot started at 9:00, we were the second team to go, we left at 9:35. They also made mistakes with the scoring. When there were stacks of pennies on the target, they counted the bottom penny towards the score even though the rules are pretty explicit in saying it shouldn't be counted. This caused our score to be about double what it should have been ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Disease Detectives(6): The first ~half of the test was copied directly from last year's Battle of Valley Forge test.

PA States

Disease Detectives(4): This one wasn't necessarily a bad test, but it was just... weird. The multiple choice was pretty easy(with a few recycled questions from last year) and the case study was very short, but it repeated a lot of questions. There were two questions that asked to interpret data(they were both confidence intervals of odds ratios with p-values) of the same data, except one was worth 10 points and the other was worth 8. Pretty much all of the differentiating points came from those two questions and another question that asked for advantages and disadvantages of different interview methods.

Experimental Design(19): Something here is very fishy, and this event was not even close to run well. More detail here.

Invasive Species(4): The test was harder than last year's, which is good, but it was oddly structured. Each station had four very easy 1 point questions and then a 2 point all or nothing question which was much harder. Since the hard question on each slide is what probably differentiated most teams, it just doesn't seem right to me to make it worth more and not give partial credit. This wasn't a huge problem though. One big thing was that the test was given on a powerpoint presentation and there was a big, uncovered window on the door, so if you got there early(which everyone in my timeslot did because it ran a little late), then you could see the last few species on the test as long as you didn't make it obvious to everyone else that you were trying. I'd like to think no one cheated this way, but it's a problem that it was an option.

Wind Power(1): This event had both good and bad parts to it, which is why I will also be mentioning it in Awesomely Run Event Stories. The test was a mix of harder theory questions and ridiculously easy Ohm's Law or unit conversion(they literally gave you a bunch of numbers and the unit they wanted the answer in, so all you had to do was multiply a few numbers) questions. The only problem with the hard questions is that they were all taken directly from the Tiger or Regionals tests, so some teams had a clear advantage there. For blade testing, they enforced the 5cm rule again. This shouldn't have had a big impact on scores, but come on, at least know the rules for the event you're running.

[NeilMehta]

This happened at the NYS comp in 2017. This is so funny, so in wind power once we had a fire drill and we left the building only like 10 minutes into the event. We were fine, everything was just pushed back a half an hour. I can just imagine those towers and scramblers and mission possibles, especially the towers, just imagine you loading the bucket with sand and all of a sudden the fire alarm goes off. Still glad I did towers earlier that day

God, I remember that one... not a fun time //
I don't think it was a drill though, iirc some food or something set off a smoke alarm

[Megok17]

This happened at the NYS comp in 2017. This is so funny, so in wind power once we had a fire drill and we left the building only like 10 minutes into the event. We were fine, everything was just pushed back a half an hour. I can just imagine those towers and scramblers and mission possibles, especially the towers, just imagine you loading the bucket with sand and all of a sudden the fire alarm goes off. Still glad I did towers earlier that day

God, I remember that one... not a fun time //
I don't think it was a drill though, iirc some food or something set off a smoke alarm

When that happened I was in Meteorology! We were all standing outside, and we were mixed in with the Invasive Species and Road Scholar kids. One Procter gathered all the Road Scholar people to the school sign and made them take a group picture is front of it!

[Megok17]

This happened at the NYS comp in 2017. This is so funny, so in wind power once we had a fire drill and we left the building only like 10 minutes into the event. We were fine, everything was just pushed back a half an hour. I can just imagine those towers and scramblers and mission possibles, especially the towers, just imagine you loading the bucket with sand and all of a sudden the fire alarm goes off. Still glad I did towers earlier that day

God, I remember that one... not a fun time //
I don't think it was a drill though, iirc some food or something set off a smoke alarm

When that happened I was in Meteorology! We were all standing outside, and we were mixed in with the Invasive Species and Road Scholar kids. One Procter gathered all the Road Scholar people to the school sign and made them take a group picture is front of it!

*Proctor

[scioly2345]

God, I remember that one... not a fun time //
I don't think it was a drill though, iirc some food or something set off a smoke alarm

When that happened I was in Meteorology! We were all standing outside, and we were mixed in with the Invasive Species and Road Scholar kids. One Procter gathered all the Road Scholar people to the school sign and made them take a group picture is front of it!

*Proctor

Meaghan. Hello. It's Ara. The fire or smoke was from hot dogs, right?

[Megok17]

When that happened I was in Meteorology! We were all standing outside, and we were mixed in with the Invasive Species and Road Scholar kids. One Procter gathered all the Road Scholar people to the school sign and made them take a group picture is front of it!

*Proctor

Meaghan. Hello. It's Ara. The fire or smoke was from hot dogs, right?

Yep, a smoking tray of hotdogs managed to shut down the New York State Science Olympiad Competion for 15 minutes

[whythelongface]

One of my favorite PRES stories involves the Yale Microbe Mission test. Our school, WW-P South, sent two teams to that competition.

My first complaint was that it was a station test. You heard me right. A microbiology event became a station event. What was worse, it also heavily emphasized ID. It was also really short, and it was one of those tests where it was so easy any mistake would cost you places. They also had a picture of an archaean that looked a lot like a bacterium. I suspect that's what got many people confused and cost them their medals. And then, to top off the genius, our two teams were placed next to each other (there were two teams per station). What follows isn't the proctor's fault, but some idiot decided to REPORT US for cheating, even though we didn't talk to each other, and had different notesheets. (I grandfathered the notesheet, but the other team used such a heavily modified version that it really wasn't the same thing anymore). Our other team ended up placing sixth and we placed seventh, right behind them, but it's not pleasant to wait in an office half an hour before results at your second ever competition wondering why you were at risk of getting DQ'd.

Second is a New Jersey UCC regionals Rocks and Minerals test, a majority of which was stolen from online. Funnily enough, I had seen it once before the competition (pretty sure it's here in the test exchange somewhere), but had long since forgotten what the test questions were about by the time we got to competition. Some teams, though, had the WHOLE THING printed in their binders. Whatever; we still got first.

[Unome]

One of my favorite PRES stories involves the Yale Microbe Mission test. Our school, WW-P South, sent two teams to that competition.

My first complaint was that it was a station test. You heard me right. A microbiology event became a station event. What was worse, it also heavily emphasized ID. It was also really short, and it was one of those tests where it was so easy any mistake would cost you places. They also had a picture of an archaean that looked a lot like a bacterium. I suspect that's what got many people confused and cost them their medals. And then, to top off the genius, our two teams were placed next to each other (there were two teams per station). What follows isn't the proctor's fault, but some idiot decided to REPORT US for cheating, even though we didn't talk to each other, and had different notesheets. (I grandfathered the notesheet, but the other team used such a heavily modified version that it really wasn't the same thing anymore). Our other team ended up placing sixth and we placed seventh, right behind them, but it's not pleasant to wait in an office half an hour before results at your second ever competition wondering why you were at risk of getting DQ'd.

No comments on the rest of it (I agree, it wasn't a very good test), but there's nothing wrong with a stations test for Microbe Mission. In fact, outside of ID events, it's one of the events that's most likely to be station-based.

[whythelongface]

But it's not like the stations were remotely lab-based, or something you'd expect out of stations. I've had other stations Microbe tests, but none of them were putting pictures of stuff on the walls and calling it a "test".