Poorly Run Event Stories

[Fanglin]

We just had our first invitational at Rockford, and boy, the supervisors there were completely out of their minds. First of all, in Air trajectory, the gave us 8 minutes to assemble our machine, and to shoot. Also, even worse, the dude running it was running two lanes at a time, so we got like half of the time, because he didn't pause it. For Bottle Rockets, they gave Daniel Wright a really high score, even though I saw them shoot, and I timed them. For Road Scholar, the dude who wrote the test, ordered the wrong map, and I had to explain to him that PLSS is not the same as UTM and some other stuff. So I waisted a ton of time, which ended us 0.1 points behind first place. The grader for meteorology must have just been a volunteer, who knew none of the curriculum and must have been just grading off an answer sheet. We had a ton of questions that were right, but they marked wrong. That is why, for study events, you should actually have someone who knows the topic grade the tests, because then, if something is not "word for word" the they still might see what you mean, and mark it right. Anyway, it was really frustrating. I hope it is better at our next competition.

Bruhh I am from Daniel wright bottle rockets and we got 2 17 second flights so get your facts straight

And it doesn't really matter bcuz we got 30 total points

You know the dude with the american airlines sweater that was on your team, we saw him shoot, and your own team coach said that they were JV. They were the 17 seconders, but your varsity team had one good one and one bad one, and they were counted as two good ones.

[shoujolivia]

at state last year I competed in div. b for road scholar.
the proctor gave us maps that were just black and white googled images
and they were in spanish...

[Panda Weasley]

Regionals is done which means time for poorly run event stories!

Forensics- The person who usually runs Crime Busters and Forensics got a group of his students to run it which led to a few issues. The main one was there was an answer sheet that they didn't print (or ran out of copies of, I'm not sure) so we didn't have one. We had to write the answers on the back of the test which isn't too bad, but it was frustrating because we wasted time trying to figure out where they wanted us to write the answers. Overall the event wasn't actually that bad, but after having it run so well previously it was a disappointment.

Hydrogeology- Part of the Hydrogeology test was an online computer model which meant they had us using computers. Said computers were connected to the internet with nothing stopping anyone from Googling all the answers.

[Magikarpmaster629]

I forgot to write this for regionals.

Fossils- They had real fossils, which was nice. However, since there were only three teams taking the test in our test block, the supervisors let us roam to whatever station we wanted to go to and didn't time the stations. There was no answer sheet- we just used lined paper we happened to have with us- and every question was identification. They just told us to identify all the taxons we could, which was really sketchy because often there are many super and subclasses and we barely had time to write them all. Nevertheless we got first, so that's okay.

Astronomy- The test was great- in fact, it was about as hard or even harder than the nationals test last year. But they gave us a horrible room- the desk surface was about the same size as my laptop. >_< We got first there too.

[[NerdyTotoro]]

So at this invitational at Mesa Robles, I had to compete for Disease Detectives with this other person from my team. When we got there, we saw that the tests were basically 2 tests (one by SoNerd) from the Test Exchange section mashed together. Literally all the questions were the same and the answers were the same. And that's probably why we failed at that competition.

[maxxxxx]

Experimental Design at regionals yesterday was run(ran?) pretty poorly. The ES and helpers stayed in the front of the room while they left the second door in the back of the room wide open for anyone to look through. They printed the rules on the back of the sheet explaining the experiment, yet didn't DQ the group of 4 people with improper eye protection(and they were pretty clear about us having to wear goggles the entire time). They also made us start 5 minutes late(we still got 50 minutes, but it could have made several people late for their next event). Overall the ES didn't seem like she understood the event very well and may not have understood the grading, but that's not my decision to make.

There was also a big problem in WIDI of some teams not receiving important pieces, but if someone else knows more about that please share.

Also in Anatomy there were more stations than time, and every team missed a (different) station which is pretty unfair to the competitors.

[Unome]

Experimental Design at regionals yesterday was run(ran?) pretty poorly. The ES and helpers stayed in the front of the room while they left the second door in the back of the room wide open for anyone to look through. They printed the rules on the back of the sheet explaining the experiment, yet didn't DQ the group of 4 people with improper eye protection(and they were pretty clear about us having to wear goggles the entire time). They also made us start 5 minutes late(we still got 50 minutes, but it could have made several people late for their next event). Overall the ES didn't seem like she understood the event very well and may not have understood the grading, but that's not my decision to make.

There was also a big problem in WIDI of some teams not receiving important pieces, but if someone else knows more about that please share.

Also in Anatomy there were more stations than time, and every team missed a (different) station which is pretty unfair to the competitors.

Assuming you're in SE PA, I notice from the scoresheet that many of the top teams did badly in WIDI; maybe this was the reason?

[maxxxxx]

Assuming you're in SE PA, I notice from the scoresheet that many of the top teams did badly in WIDI; maybe this was the reason?

Usually in SEPA the top teams don't do so well in WIDI, but it's the teams that usually score within the 200+ point range(you can see that in B division too). But yeah, usually more than 1 states qualifying team gets top 10. I know Harriton tried to appeal it but the appeals committee decided to use the piece as bonus points or something like that(which doesn't even work in science olympiad).

[cemsc10]

Almost every Meteorology test this year has been on the wrong topic, which is really bugging me. We've gotten used to it by now, and it's like our team's best event currently. The worst test was the Meteorology one at Solon. The lady was just so irresponsible. First off, she tld us we had a minute to run back and get calculators, so I literally sprinted there and back. When I came back, she took my calculator and said it wasn't allowed... Then, the test was 100% climate even though this year was everyday weather, and everyone failed...Except for the team who made the test of course...

[samlan16]

Wind Power: Proctors built a test rig with PVC pipe such that it blocked the air flow of everyone's props, meaning everyone generated 30 mV or less for both high and low speeds despite having generated 400 or 500 mV at earlier competitions.

Bridge Building: Once again, a test rig problem. Rather than using the standardized testing table for the civil engineering rotation, the proctors built their own. I have no problems with proctors trying to save money or anything like that (b/c the table is expensive), but they misinterpreted the rules. They believed that because the bridges must be >=45 cm in length, they could make the opening exactly 45 cm. Needless to say, many deserving teams with lightweight, sturdy bridges could not compete.

The moral here: ensure that your test does not put deserving competitors at a disadvantage.