Poorly Run Event Stories

[texas]

The events at the Sartartia Invitational were run by seventh and eighth graders.

[Unome]

Time to revive this thread.

At UGA invitational on Saturday:

Disease Detectives: The test was a bit easy, but more importantly; every question was weighted the same. This includes a wide variety of question types, from True/False questions all the way up to something along the lines of "List four foodborne illnesses, their symptoms, treatments, etiological agents, etc." In addition, the test had no calculation questions and no case studies; just a series of definition-based questions, descriptive questions, and general microbiology of the sort found in Microbe Mission. 5/10 only because it was a decent length.

Remote Sensing: 20 multiple choice, 8 matching, 1 free response. The free response was the only question involving any sort of image interpretation; the rest was mostly definition-based with a few calculation problems. 4/10

Dynamic Planet and Astronomy were ok-ish tests (7 or 8 out of 10, Astro was very long but a little easy, DyPlan was slightly out of focus and not much free response/application). WIDI is under ARES.

[pikachu4919]

Idk if this was already mentioned somewhere in this thread since I haven't checked it in a while but at Wright State Invitational in 2016, the people running Protein Modeling had us use a tough wire instead of a mini toober for the onsite model. My teammates and I came out with super red hands.

[Verdigris]

Our team was helping to run the Lake Nona invitational yesterday, and for the most part, it went smoothly enough. For Experimental Design, however, whoever was providing the materials provided a single bin with a few bottles of hydrogen peroxide, one jug of vinegar, two boxes of baking soda, one jar of yeast, and one stack of about twelve or so cups- for 15 teams to share. Needless to say, it was a madhouse, and we kept having to take cups from other rooms and random sources to provide to the teams that couldn't get any. (In retrospect, we probably should've tried to both get the materials ourselves and set out individual portions for each team...)

In addition, it was scheduled for the last block of the day, so we had to form a sort of assembly line to get all the papers graded in time for the awards ceremony (we managed to do it in 40 minutes, amazingly enough). It was just a general mess. XD

[Fluorine]

Our team was helping to run the Lake Nona invitational yesterday, and for the most part, it went smoothly enough. For Experimental Design, however, whoever was providing the materials provided a single bin with a few bottles of hydrogen peroxide, one jug of vinegar, two boxes of baking soda, one jar of yeast, and one stack of about twelve or so cups- for 15 teams to share. Needless to say, it was a madhouse, and we kept having to take cups from other rooms and random sources to provide to the teams that couldn't get any. (In retrospect, we probably should've tried to both get the materials ourselves and set out individual portions for each team...)

In addition, it was scheduled for the last block of the day, so we had to form a sort of assembly line to get all the papers graded in time for the awards ceremony (we managed to do it in 40 minutes, amazingly enough). It was just a general mess. XD

As a note, I would just like to applaud you all for the invitational you ended up putting together. Overall, you put together an invite that was perfect from practice and served the goal of helping students prepare for regional and state competition. To note I enjoyed the lunch break that was placed into the schedule and everyone running events was super friendly and understanding. Running an invite is difficult and really is something that can be impossible to get just "perfect." So your school really deserves a congrats for having a C division invite. Just some minor feedback: 1) watch the amount of test bank questions you used...... some of us "intense" south Floridian teams WILL exploit that a bit too much at future invites (if there is one next year) 2) Some of your event supervising people (who I know are mostly all students) should focus on directing participants to what they should be doing. A couple times the teams would be just standing around and receive blank stares from the people running the event on where to sit/do. Overall good job again. Hope to see your team at States!

[lolripscioly]

Once in WIDI the proctor came super late so they gave the writers 15 minutes and the builders 10 minutes.
At CyFalls in Crime Busters the proctor was late so we got 30 minutes and the proctor didnt bring out the chromatography till the last 2 minutes
At Langham Creek the roller coaster proctor didnt know the difference between tiers and DQ so he DQ'ed like 5 teams.
oh and cant forget when the WIDI proctor gave us one sheet of red construction paper to write on!

[Unome]

Stories from Brookwood yesterday:

WIDI: So the model that we got was a bit unstable, and used Elmer's glue to hold together some components. However, the builders didn't get any glue, which made some parts of the model very difficult or impossible (how does one stand a popsicle stick on the thin edge without glue?)

Astronomy: The test was thirty (easy) multiple choice questions; we finished in 20 minutes (time was the tiebreaker, so since it was so easy we decided not to check over a third time), and got second with 27/30 (at least one of which was misgraded).

Disease Detectives and Microbes were pretty good, though Microbes was a bit short (finished every 6.5 minute station with at least 2 minutes left).

[Complexity]

Once in WIDI the proctor came super late so they gave the writers 15 minutes and the builders 10 minutes.
At CyFalls in Crime Busters the proctor was late so we got 30 minutes and the proctor didnt bring out the chromatography till the last 2 minutes
At Langham Creek the roller coaster proctor didnt know the difference between tiers and DQ so he DQ'ed like 5 teams.
oh and cant forget when the WIDI proctor gave us one sheet of red construction paper to write on!

That is EXACTLY what happened to us in hovercraft. We got DQ for one construction violation. Appeal didnt go through

[Complexity]

Lol this happened at states for Picture This last year, the door had a window in it, and you could see the cards from outside. We went first at 9:00, and they covered it after we left. When I was testing inside, I literally saw kids watching through the window...

[Sliced Ham]

About two weeks ago, our school went to this very short meet (supposedly, you could only do three events). Even though the events ended at 12:30, it was a walk-in, so quite a few of us did 6 events.
I headed into Fast Facts with my partner (I'd never done Fast Facts before, and I was replacing her partner for whatever reason) and I had some skittles I bought on me.
We went in with the skittles.
All of the other teams looked completely serious and focused. We didn't. My partner even put down 'Magenta' for our team color.
We kept on eating the skittles through the event. The event supervisors didn't say a word about it.

We got first place.