Scioly.org

Ahh. Got it... I was like wait what??

dont blame you

sofan wrote:

GeoChamp96 wrote:Well, at any rate, it seems like Friday mostly effected everyone the same way (except possibly the MagLev test and those pesky Storm the Castle winds), so I doubt the scores were impacted too much. Fortunately, Saturday went a lot better...

This year has definitely inspired my team to work harder and hopefully make a shot at the top 5 next year. I hope we can get enough people to make it happen though...

same for us. And we need to decide quicker when we want to appeal. (it tooks us 20 min to decide whether we wanted to tell the judges that we got less time than the even teams.Whole process took 1 hour.We still got 4th.)(triple E)

I'm really glad that your teams feel this way. Here's to next year being super competitive and anybody's game! It's no fun if the same teams win years and years in a row

GeoChamp96 wrote:Well, at any rate, it seems like Friday mostly effected everyone the same way (except possibly the MagLev test and those pesky Storm the Castle winds), so I doubt the scores were impacted too much. Fortunately, Saturday went a lot better...

This year has definitely inspired my team to work harder and hopefully make a shot at the top 5 next year. I hope we can get enough people to make it happen though...

This was actually the first year that my team didn't have any major engineering failures (last year our robot arm was a box of saltines, some cardboard and a bottle of arizona tea) so that was good since this year we got 4th

jlee7x2 wrote:

sofan wrote:

GeoChamp96 wrote:Well, at any rate, it seems like Friday mostly effected everyone the same way (except possibly the MagLev test and those pesky Storm the Castle winds), so I doubt the scores were impacted too much. Fortunately, Saturday went a lot better...

This year has definitely inspired my team to work harder and hopefully make a shot at the top 5 next year. I hope we can get enough people to make it happen though...

same for us. And we need to decide quicker when we want to appeal. (it tooks us 20 min to decide whether we wanted to tell the judges that we got less time than the even teams.Whole process took 1 hour.We still got 4th.)(triple E)

I'm really glad that your teams feel this way. Here's to next year being super competitive and anybody's game! It's no fun if the same teams win years and years in a row

yes we shall try our best at every level of competition and work hard at practices.

Barker wrote:

GeoChamp96 wrote:Well, at any rate, it seems like Friday mostly effected everyone the same way (except possibly the MagLev test and those pesky Storm the Castle winds), so I doubt the scores were impacted too much. Fortunately, Saturday went a lot better...

This year has definitely inspired my team to work harder and hopefully make a shot at the top 5 next year. I hope we can get enough people to make it happen though...

This was actually the first year that my team didn't have any major engineering failures (last year our robot arm was a box of saltines, some cardboard and a bottle of arizona tea) so that was good since this year we got 4th

I remember that... I kinda followed your robot arm guys through the year, when we met up at various contests we compare arms and discuss how we were doing certain things... First time I got to see the full national arm was at state and it was in a box dead. That really sucked... I wanted to see it run as well

sofan wrote:

jlee7x2 wrote:

sofan wrote: same for us. And we need to decide quicker when we want to appeal. (it tooks us 20 min to decide whether we wanted to tell the judges that we got less time than the even teams.Whole process took 1 hour.We still got 4th.)(triple E)

I'm really glad that your teams feel this way. Here's to next year being super competitive and anybody's game! It's no fun if the same teams win years and years in a row

yes we shall try our best at every level of competition and work hard at practices.

It will be interesting to see how many (if any) teams make that extra step to have a shot at the title like Clements. I hope there will be at least a few, it will make it more competitive and fun.

GeoChamp96 wrote:

sofan wrote: yes we shall try our best at every level of competition and work hard at practices.

It will be interesting to see how many (if any) teams make that extra step to have a shot at the title like Clements. I hope there will be at least a few, it will make it more competitive and fun.

I agree that competition is good and it improves all the teams involved, but I hate Texas events. I think that the chance for maybe compete in some extra events that students might be more interested in is a nice thing to have as the Texas events cover areas of science that maybe aren't addressed otherwise. I don't know about most teams but many teams (like Clements and Seven Lakes) have in the past used them to avoid competing events that they think they might not do well in in the hopes of placing better overall, their way of "leveling the playing field". In this way they deincentivize the hard work of, as a team, trying to improve your worst events. This is an effort, not to sound cliche or hokey, improves character, the willingness to work hard instead of just giving up is extremely important and it is odd that in an academic competition we allow that that to happen.

I'll admit that I am from LASA, but this isn't just bitterness talking. But what do you think kept LASA state champions for so long? It wasn't giving up. Do you think that we are so much basically smarter than you that other teams need some handicap? LASA doesn't compete in Texas events, not because we don't think we don't need them but because we have decided that we want to do as well at Nationals as possible, which means working hard to improve what we're worst at. We don't have more resources than anyone else, we just have dedicated members willing to work hard for months. In January we went to an Invitational in Ohio, I don't remember exactly what place it was, but we did really poorly in Water Quality, bottom half almost. So for the past 3 months we got cranking, we studied hard an devoted ourselves to this event and got 2nd last weekend.

So I hope that teams are willing to take "that extra step", as long as it doesn't involve giving up.

Barker wrote:

GeoChamp96 wrote:

sofan wrote: yes we shall try our best at every level of competition and work hard at practices.

It will be interesting to see how many (if any) teams make that extra step to have a shot at the title like Clements. I hope there will be at least a few, it will make it more competitive and fun.

I agree that competition is good and it improves all the teams involved, but I hate Texas events. I think that the chance for maybe compete in some extra events that students might be more interested in is a nice thing to have as the Texas events cover areas of science that maybe aren't addressed otherwise. I don't know about most teams but many teams (like Clements and Seven Lakes) have in the past used them to avoid competing events that they think they might not do well in in the hopes of placing better overall, their way of "leveling the playing field". In this way they deincentivize the hard work of, as a team, trying to improve your worst events. This is an effort, not to sound cliche or hokey, improves character, the willingness to work hard instead of just giving up is extremely important and it is odd that in an academic competition we allow that that to happen.

I'll admit that I am from LASA, but this isn't just bitterness talking. But what do you think kept LASA state champions for so long? It wasn't giving up. Do you think that we are so much basically smarter than you that other teams need some handicap? LASA doesn't compete in Texas events, not because we don't think we don't need them but because we have decided that we want to do as well at Nationals as possible, which means working hard to improve what we're worst at. We don't have more resources than anyone else, we just have dedicated members willing to work hard for months. In January we went to an Invitational in Ohio, I don't remember exactly what place it was, but we did really poorly in Water Quality, bottom half almost. So for the past 3 months we got cranking, we studied hard an devoted ourselves to this event and got 2nd last weekend.

So I hope that teams are willing to take "that extra step", as long as it doesn't involve giving up.

It's not "giving up" so much as it's playing to your strengths. Most of us honestly aren't really thinking about nationals as much except a vague dream. We do the events we're best at/enjoy doing most, and if that helps our overall score, so much the better.

If Texas suddenly decided to drop all of its trial events, all the teams would no doubt do exactly what you said, improve at the ones they're worst at since they'd have no other choice. Instead, they have an opportunity to place somewhat higher instead of banging their heads against the wall.

I think it's just that most teams have different priorities from LASA. Almost none of us will ever go to nationals, so we just do the ones we like the most and try to have a slightly better overall team score.

But you have to realize, a lot of us are trying hard simply to get to nationals in the first place. We(CyFalls) competed in as many trial events as possible, not because we didn't want to try hard, but because no matter how hard we try, we still struggle to beat you guys. And I know for a fact you have more resources than us. People are willing to donate to your builders, you had a plasma table donated from te community. You've got a laser cutter and cnc tooling. Last year your head builder owned a lathe. The only laser cutter I even have access too doesn't do any more than engrave. Our shop has no metalworking tools, even if it did we couldn't use it because our shop teacher doesn't let us in the shop. We're not lazy by any respect, we just don't have your resources, or time. We don't get to spend a class period each day on scioly. We don't get graded on how we do and we don't get to see the team every day. I have to pay for every build I do, and it's expensive. I don't get anything donated because we haven't been to nationals in years. Even so, Houston isn't a town with lots small businesses willing to help out, everyone here is in oil and doesn't do charity.

Texas events let us actually compete. There's no sense in calling schools lazy when you don't know our circumstances.


I don't mean to sound mean, but you've found my soapbox