Amphibians and Reptiles

[gneissisnice]

Yeah, if it was short answer we would have done much worse.

[dickyjones]

Nationals this year was mostly multiple choice (for non-ID).

If you haven't studied, you're lucky to get a multiple choice test since it gives you a chance to get some points by just eliminating some others and using common sense. But for the teams that have studied the most, it kind of eliminate some of the advantage they have gained because other teams might be able to 'guess' the right answers. Plus I'm awful at taking MC tests...so for me, it is completely unlucky to get a multiple choice test. I guess I can understand why event supervisors make them, though, because of their ease in grading.

[Pleiades]

What were some of the questions? The team from my state usually does good in every event and gets top 20 in every event and gets top 10 in a lot of events. Overall they are always in the top 10. When the results from nats came back i was surprised i didnt see them in the top 10 [this is div. B] I later found out that they got 54th place in amphibians and reptiles which costed them their top 10 finish!! I knew that they werent that good at that event as they finished 9th place in it at states but i was very surprised they did that poorly at nationals. I know this is division B and your in C but i'm assuming the tests were very similar. I cant wait until the test packet comes out so that way i can see the full test and see what went wrong with them and how i would of done at nationals in that event after getting second place in it at states.

[Pleiades]

Bad news My coaches went to that summer institute thing in arizona last week and they got a memory stick with all sorts of info on amphibians and reptiles/herpetology so my coach decided to give it to me. I opened it up and watched a slide show about the event and it mentioned that one change for this year is that we arent aloud to make our own field guide We're only allowed to have a published guide!!!! I think this is a horrible idea and it needs to be changed. I wrote a thing about it on the Rules Discussion. Hopefully you guys could add stuff to it. The more people who agree with me the more chance we have at changing that rule [well, at least i think so]

[dickyjones]

I really don't remember much about the nats test. Mostly multiple choice and generic questions about habitat, behavior, or anatomy. I don't think there was anything on conservation though, found that weird. Three stations had multiple specimens and were like "which of these are poisonous" and such.

That's actually very interesting. They better classify what a published guide is. A couple of teams (2 of them beat me ) brought encyclopedias for bugs at nats, which I thought was kind of against the spirit of the competition. If you can modify the published guide, I'm pretty much fine with that. It is a very strange twist though.

[gneissisnice]

WHAT?!?!?!?!? We cant make our own field guide? That is beyond stupid. Now we have to find a field guide that completely suits us, rather than making one that we'd be able to understand and navigate much better.

[dudeincolorado]

O.O that no bueno at all but thats ok i guess i didnt make one for rocks last year i just wrote the page number down beside the list if thats allowed if not that index and you are gonning to be best freinds very soon

[Pleiades]

Do you think it's too late to change that rule? I already made a post about it on the rules discussion but if they have already written the final rules then they wont change it. I will be really pigeon if they dont change it since i spent around 5 hours a day on week days and 8 hours on weekends from the beginning of January to the beginning of March working on the 500 page guide. After all that work now i cant even use it again

[Pleiades]

after talking with the manager of the rules discussion page thru PM it doesnt look like the rule is going to be changed.
haha i love how bad words get replaced with butterfly. [see my above post]

[dickyjones]

Yeah, that censor can make for some butterfly good conversations.

Well, I'll be writing REALLY small in these field guides. And the 1000000 post it notes attached will be a nice touch as well.