Scioly.org

Reminder that this thread is meant as a service to first time proctors and also that some proctors come on this site and read these comments >.>

Lol.Uh Oh

[quote="321Kaboom"]At the Harper College Regional,
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321Kaboom wrote:

321Kaboom wrote:At the Harper College Regional,
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You don't have to remove the post, but don't get too angry haha

I don't think I ever actually posted in this thread about the worst event I ever competed in, so I figure I may as well. (Frankly, a vast majority of competitions I've been in have been pretty well run.)

2016 NJ States Wind Power, the written test was just the first test printed off the test exchange, and it's a binder event, so a lot of people had the answer key - but like, it would've still been possible to score the even based on build scores, right?

But the testing rig for the CD's had tape on it and each team was allowed to try to rip the tape such that it stopped getting in the way of the CD's (although it used up some of their testing time). The circuit with which the voltage was being tested wasn't well connected, and each team was allowed to try to fix the wire connections so a voltage would actually show up. The fan was sitting on an uneven cardboard box, and each team was allowed to try to move the fan. So the event wasn't really testing how well your blade apparatus extracted energy from the fan, but how much you'd managed to fix the circuit, and they through the results out (obviously). I guess it might be a lot of work for proctors who are just given a page of instructions with no prior experience and no real understanding of what they're doing, but maybe trying to test the testing setup somehow for a build event is really important. The event was not supposed to be about how much of your testing time were you willing to use to fix the testing rig, but that's what it became.

But I guess if that's the worst event I dealt with in 3 years of scioly, it's not that much to complain about.

The 2017 Wind Power test (division B at NJ states) was incredibly well written and difficult, but there was no lab portion. I guess they learned from their mistakes.

shrewdPanther46 wrote:The 2017 Wind Power test (division B at NJ states) was incredibly well written and difficult, but there was no lab portion. I guess they learned from their mistakes.

They told us in advance that it was going to be no build, so I definitely mind that less than if we thought there would be a build and then it turned out to be useless - division C was the same, my only complaint was that the way the test focused so much on NJ specifically was a bit odd. I think they were short of people both years, just in 2016 they dealt with that by giving a clueless ES a poor-quality photograph of the setup, while in 2017 they dealt with that by eliminating the part they couldn't run without more people. I agree, that does seem like better planning.

Last year at my regional event the people running Scrambler had no idea what they were doing and set up the event on a carpet. My coach got very angry and forced them to move it to the gym. After that they just eyeballed a ten meter line and by then my coach was gone so I made them measure out ten meters and do everything correctly (Scrambler is my favorite event ever, I wasn't go to let these people mess it up for me). In the end at my regional event I got first at Scrambler and all was well.

State stories...

Anatomy and Physiology (10th) - rather strange. The test sort of skipped over significant portions of the event, although the existing questions were pretty good. It was extremely short, however - ~30 questions mulitple-choice and matching, and a single free-response question (11 points for a detailed description of the life cycle of HIV, extremely niche for 25% of the score). The proctors spent the beginning of the event session basically hanging around and setting up, with an excruciatingly long intro (we didn't even start until 15 minutes into the session) - I very much hope there was at least the same amount of time given to the second session...

Astronomy (2nd) - 35 MC, 5 free response. Same ES as last year - at least this year the questions generally followed the rules and (for the most part) weren't trivia. Many questions were horribly worded - for example "In which section (letters marked) of the HR diagram is a star with an apparent magnitude of 7", rather than the intention which seems to have been something like "Consider the DSO with an apparent magnitude of 7. In which section...". Tiebreakers were absolute nonsense trivia as well. Two of the free-response questions specifically said "answer in one word" even though the correct answer for at least one of them was two words (a constellation name).

Herpetology (3rd) - Literally the test from Fairfax invitational, and poorly-executed to boot. The test itself was decent but definitely on the easy side (and with ambiguous questions), but of course anyone with the answer key in their binder could easily win. Rather than setting up the stations or even displaying a Powerpoint, the proctor just scrolled through a PDF of the stations.

Happily, Fermi Questions goes in ARES.

States was fun, but the Potions and Poisons test wasn't necessarily the greatest. First of all, it had a whopping 0% chemistry portion. The entire test was specimens, toxins, and household chemicals. While this was a relief for my partner and I (who literally copy-pasted our entire chemistry section), our "rival" wasn't so lucky. He and his partner studied their own parts for the event, he studying the chemistry part and his partner doing the organisms and stuff. So, he basically sat around after doing the lab. Also, the answer key was incorrect for many questions. I can identify at least five questions which were incorrectly graded. Finally, the proctors refused to let us leave early. When trying to turn in our test, they said to just wait. I had an event in the next slot and barely got there in time. Although the event wasn't run THAT badly, I still think there was a lengthy room for improvement.