Poorly Run Event Stories

[Flavorflav]

For Herpetology B we had this proctor who clearly had no idea what Herpetology was, and he also probably never used powerpoint. Before he told us to start he put up the first slide, which nobody could read or see the photos on because it was 10 point font and everybody was towards the back of the room. He tried to move the desks up, but it didn't work, so instead he decided that if we needed to see the slides we could just run up to the board, read them, and run back to our seats. I had to read my partner every question, and run up to the screen to see the photos. After spending 10 minutes on the first slide, after 20 minutes of attempting to move desks, he realized that he didn't know how to make the slides change on their own, and he wasn't timing the slides. He then told people that because he couldn't figure it out, they could take out their phones to time it as long as they promised not to cheat. He tried to time it for the rest of the powerpoint by asking everybody if they were finished with the slide, and in order to move on he'd wait for everyone to say yes. If you asked him any questions about how he horribly mixed up Family and Genus, he'd say he doesn't know. Obviously we ran out of time (which happens when you have unlimited time on each slide) and had to cross out and skip like 4 slides. By the end of the test he gave us a bonus that didn't make any sense and told us to fill in the parts that are correct and just leave the ones that don't make sense because he couldn't figure out what was wrong with it.

I remember that! He gave us a cladogram for the bonus with 12 spaces but only 11 choices.

Which competition was this?

[Unome]

From UGA this past Saturday:

Astronomy - a rather short test, just 60 multiple-choice questions. The test was pretty good other than several questions not having units (though I was able to answer most or all of them correctly because of how the problems were) and the ES using the approximation M = 1 solar mass for a Kepler's third law question, but the proctors seemed rather unsure of what they were doing (as is apt to happen at UGA). Finished in 25 minutes alone and won, partially because of the test length.

Anatomy and Physiology - Again, a short test (barely 50 questions), almost all multiple-choice, but fairly good questions otherwise. Could have been much worse.

Disease Detectives - Poorly-formatted and some pretty bad questions. One of the tables was split in half, such that the first half was on the bottom left of the page, and the second half on the top right (with the question text snaking in between). One short scenario gave outcome data for the exposed group but not the unexposed group, yet still asked for a calculation of unexposed incidence and relative risk (obviously impossible). Other questions also asked for impossible calculations (again, confusing attack rate and relative risk somehow...).

Remote Sensing - Again, very short. 25 multiple-choice questions and 15 matching, plus a "short answer" question where the key contained a single sentence. Several questions also had missing units. Of course, quite a few questions were rather sketchy - according to the key it's more acceptable to detect stars with active sensing than temperature (because obviously you should be waiting a few decades/centuries to detect reflected light after pointing your active sensor at a star...).

Herpetology - Probably the worst test I took at UGA this year. The stations had one sheet for the image and one for the questions, despite there being easily enough space to fit both on one page. The stations were poorly labeled (font size 14 headers haha) making it hard to see which station were were supposed to be going to, and the rotation order was not explained beforehand in any way. Of course, teams got confused about which way they were supposed to be going, and we ended up at the last station with three other teams simultaneously, with me standing on a chair to make room for everyone else. The event was held in a large lecture hall along with one or two other events - this was not itself a problem (the place was a good fit and had sufficient table space), except that for some reason Herpetology was on the edge, so the tables went up to the wall - rotation was therefore much more complicated than it had to be. The stations were 2:50 each but had only 5 multiple-choice questions per station - despite my partner and I having done minimal studying (literally less than 10 hours total combined) and having to use a field guide, we finished several stations with at least half the time left. Not to mention the questions themselves - most of the identification questions asked for species name, in direct contradiction to rule 3.d.

Now off to ARES to talk about Mat Sci!

[bmd234]

For Herpetology B we had this proctor who clearly had no idea what Herpetology was, and he also probably never used powerpoint. Before he told us to start he put up the first slide, which nobody could read or see the photos on because it was 10 point font and everybody was towards the back of the room. He tried to move the desks up, but it didn't work, so instead he decided that if we needed to see the slides we could just run up to the board, read them, and run back to our seats. I had to read my partner every question, and run up to the screen to see the photos. After spending 10 minutes on the first slide, after 20 minutes of attempting to move desks, he realized that he didn't know how to make the slides change on their own, and he wasn't timing the slides. He then told people that because he couldn't figure it out, they could take out their phones to time it as long as they promised not to cheat. He tried to time it for the rest of the powerpoint by asking everybody if they were finished with the slide, and in order to move on he'd wait for everyone to say yes. If you asked him any questions about how he horribly mixed up Family and Genus, he'd say he doesn't know. Obviously we ran out of time (which happens when you have unlimited time on each slide) and had to cross out and skip like 4 slides. By the end of the test he gave us a bonus that didn't make any sense and told us to fill in the parts that are correct and just leave the ones that don't make sense because he couldn't figure out what was wrong with it.

I remember that! He gave us a cladogram for the bonus with 12 spaces but only 11 choices.

Which competition was this?

It was the Blue Dragon Invitational on Long Island NY in 2017.

[whythelongface]

according to the key it's more acceptable to detect stars with active sensing than temperature (because obviously you should be waiting a few decades/centuries to detect reflected light after pointing your active sensor at a star...).

I think the time scale is stretches into thousands of years for some stars.

Last weekend. The entire event is a bummer!

Could you possibly be a little more specific than that? What competition, what event, how was it run poorly?

[MissAmargasaurus]

Oooooh my gosh, this thread is a dream. At last, I can talk about the (almost) disaster that was my state's Forensics event!

Well, first off, not only were budson burners not on or provided, there was also:

* No iodine set out.
* No Benedict's solution either! We had to ask for it along with the iodine.
* And the BEST PART, part of the test actually wasn't set out. My partner noticed it and they quickly handed out the remaining part.

It got worse, too! My partner set out his chromatography papers and went on to work on other things and, no joke, the others team were stealing off them. They thought they were set out by the event supervisors! Thank goodness they at least did that part right, caught them, and had them do their own. (He also realized he did the chromatography wrong and redid it, so Joke's on them!)

Almost had one of my information sheets stolen too, that was fun. Caught another student reaching towards it and I pulled it back very quickly.

All in all, it was... Something. We still managed 1st though!

Edit* And how could I forget, the multiple people who were let in even though there were wearing t-shirts, in an event where long sleeves, long pants, and closed toe shoes are required.

[whythelongface]

Edit* And how could I forget, the multiple people who were let in even though there were wearing t-shirts, in an event where long sleeves, long pants, and closed toe shoes are required.

Isn't this a common thing with Forensics ESs who have no clue what they're doing?

[Froggie]

At regionals last year, I did optics. I guess it's small compared to some of the other stories, but still.
The midline in the optics box was a scribbled line, which meant that we couldn't see exactly where the midline was.
Even though that didn't affect our laser shoot, I'm pretty sure it must have messed up another team's plans.

[PM2017]

This took place at our Regionals last year.
The astronomy test involved approximately 1-5 calculation questions,(my "specialty") as compared to the 20 odd DSO questions(partner's specialty) and about 20 general questions. She ended up carrying us to first, while I sat there trying to answer the DSO questions. Since this is one of the easiest regionals, I guess this is forgivable.

(Disclaimer: Part of this next part was our own fault.)

Hydrogeology test was not forgivable. My partner and I went in without protractors since the previous year we had computer simulations, not the printed versions. We thought that since it was in the same room as the previous year, we would have computer simulations again. Wrong! I had to run back to my team and try in vain to get a protractor.
Meanwhile, my partner and other competitors were dealing with another situation. The test maker was not present, and the proctors that were present didn't know anything about the event and thought that competitors were allowed to a BLANK paper, instead of a paper with notes on it. Needless to say, some teams started panicking. Fortunately, when other teams backed up my partner's point, the proctors decided that we were right. Then, on the test, there were multiple typos, some of which changed the dynamic of certain questions. (Unfortunately, I can't recall any examples) We ended up placing fifth.

My last event was robot arm, which I don't think had any problems. My partner had to compete while I was taking my Astro test, and it went perfectly, from what I heard.

Then, to top everything off, it had been rainy for the past few days and rainy for some parts of the day of the competition. So, just when we were about to go for the awards ceremony, we were informed that the awards ceremony had been canceled and that the scores would be posted online. Although this wasn't the fault of the competition hosts, it was still rather annoying.

We ended up placing first.

[olivia34]

In my 7th grade year, for write it do it, the proctor forgot that you had to separate you from your partner so everyone was like ????? for 5 minutes until the other person figured it out.

[Otkrlj]

Well this may be rather minor but last year at an Individual me and my partner were in road scolor. When we saw the teat we laughed because the teat was an exact replica of the example test on soinc.com. What was worse was all the other teams were looking around everywhere and looking very stressed out. We ended up getting 6th though because we screwed up on the other part and got east and west confused which is just sad