Poorly Run Event Stories

[bernard]

Just checked, yes it was the filter.

[boomvroomshroom]

Rocks and Minerals at 2014 Nationals:
- The entire test was ONE piece of paper, including questions. For reference, the ANSWER SHEETS on most state competitions run several pages and should have at least 100 questions (CA state had ~200-250). Also, a lot of the questions were vaguely worded, so there was a lot of guesswork involved.
- They had an entire classroom to use, but they crammed all ten of the stations into one row. Each station was one desk. There was literally not enough room for two partners to stand side-by-side; one person had to cross over and read the test upside-down. Even then different teams were standing shoulder-to-shoulder and cheating was probably really easy (not that it would have helped much).
- The proctors talked a lot during the test. They were very nice and encouraging people, but when you hear them saying things like, "This is so exciting! I never had anything like this when I was in high school!" you have to wonder...

Remote Sensing at 2013 Nationals:
- This is an event about satellites, cameras, etc. One of the stations was devoted entirely to ships. Literally. There was a picture of ships, sailing in the water, and it asked us to label the "Kelvin Envelope" and stuff.
- There were a few questions asking about analysis of satellite printouts, etc. which I suppose was fair game. But what annoyed me was that there was nothing on the satellites themselves, which was weird, because the previous Nationals and State tests did. It was the last time they were doing it, too. I think they just got an entirely different writer at the last second.

At past events (both invitationals and official competitions):
- One Geomaps test had an entire section dedicated to labeling geographic formations. Problem was, they didn't specify which side the drawing was being viewed from, but in the answer box they did.
- Impound opened late, so lots of teams had to stay behind late. Old story.
- First place Scrambler team did not place the proctor forgot to write down the score, so when graders were going through, they just got a blank.
- First place Chem Lab team did not place because graders forgot to add up points from an entire page of their test.
- Many Forensics events I've been to did not provide a Bunsen burner even though you're supposed to in the rules. One even had a station-run event...that never happens in Forensics for a reason. Different parts take longer than others. No one finished the powders section and everyone was just sitting around doing whatever for the easier ID sections.
- Protein Modeling: the people who ran the event (not the same as the test writer) gave the wrong model. A competitor actually had to tell them that. Then they had to tell them the URL to the website with the right rules because they didn't have it. And normally during Protein Modeling you're supposed to have the test and the building running simultaneously, but instead they gave them one after another. It was a mess.

Management as a whole:
- Events ran late and subsequent time slots did not shift accordingly
- The final team awards ran late; they weren't handed out until ~30min after the last event was called. Which is weird, because an excel spreadsheet should literally take about 5 seconds to add up.

Not a complaint, but a funny story:
- At the MIT invitationals, halfway through the Astronomy test, the fire alarm in that building went off. So all teams taking the test in that slot had to leave the building. There were some poor kids who had taken off their sweaters indoors, and they forgot to grab them on the way out, so they were standing in the Boston snow in a t-shirt. Not the proctors' fault, but we never did find out what happened.

Sorry for the long rant! I didn't even realize I had all this stuff bottled up inside me until this post!

[samlan16]

Not a complaint, but a funny story:
- At the MIT invitationals, halfway through the Astronomy test, the fire alarm in that building went off. So all teams taking the test in that slot had to leave the building. There were some poor kids who had taken off their sweaters indoors, and they forgot to grab them on the way out, so they were standing in the Boston snow in a t-shirt. Not the proctors' fault, but we never did find out what happened.

That actually happened during a math competition last year... the fire alarm went off three times during the power round, which was only 1 hour, and they did not bother evacuating anyone.

[Skink]

Not a complaint, but a funny story:
- At the MIT invitationals, halfway through the Astronomy test, the fire alarm in that building went off. So all teams taking the test in that slot had to leave the building. There were some poor kids who had taken off their sweaters indoors, and they forgot to grab them on the way out, so they were standing in the Boston snow in a t-shirt. Not the proctors' fault, but we never did find out what happened.

That actually happened during a math competition last year... the fire alarm went off three times during the power round, which was only 1 hour, and they did not bother evacuating anyone.

One of my favorite tournament stories (getting a little old now) was an invitational once where the fire alarm went off later in the day. Why? A participant from another team was in their home base, a classroom, which happened to have classroom objects, a mini-library and...a toaster. This gentleman thought it was a good idea to put a paperback book into the toaster and proceed to toast it. The result was not pretty.

[bernard]

Not a complaint, but a funny story:
- At the MIT invitationals, halfway through the Astronomy test, the fire alarm in that building went off. So all teams taking the test in that slot had to leave the building. There were some poor kids who had taken off their sweaters indoors, and they forgot to grab them on the way out, so they were standing in the Boston snow in a t-shirt. Not the proctors' fault, but we never did find out what happened.

That actually happened during a math competition last year... the fire alarm went off three times during the power round, which was only 1 hour, and they did not bother evacuating anyone.

One of my favorite tournament stories (getting a little old now) was an invitational once where the fire alarm went off later in the day. Why? A participant from another team was in their home base, a classroom, which happened to have classroom objects, a mini-library and...a toaster. This gentleman thought it was a good idea to put a paperback book into the toaster and proceed to toast it. The result was not pretty.

I definitely was not expecting that. Shouldn't everyone know that toasting your Entomology field guide won't get you the same result as visiting an exotic restaurant?

[samlan16]

Not a complaint, but a funny story:
- At the MIT invitationals, halfway through the Astronomy test, the fire alarm in that building went off. So all teams taking the test in that slot had to leave the building. There were some poor kids who had taken off their sweaters indoors, and they forgot to grab them on the way out, so they were standing in the Boston snow in a t-shirt. Not the proctors' fault, but we never did find out what happened.

That actually happened during a math competition last year... the fire alarm went off three times during the power round, which was only 1 hour, and they did not bother evacuating anyone.

One of my favorite tournament stories (getting a little old now) was an invitational once where the fire alarm went off later in the day. Why? A participant from another team was in their home base, a classroom, which happened to have classroom objects, a mini-library and...a toaster. This gentleman thought it was a good idea to put a paperback book into the toaster and proceed to toast it. The result was not pretty.

And on the note of emergencies at SO competitions, in 8th grade we were put under a tornado warning at JC Booth while I was in Food Science; no one knew that a tornado had been on the ground about a mile away, so we continued working. About 5 minutes later, all these parents stood at the door and started spazzing for their kids to come out because it was so "dangerous" (even though the event was in an interior room), but the proctors kept the event going to avoid cheating. Miraculously, I came in 3rd despite loud screaming for about 20 minutes.

[dragonfruit35]

At Rocks and Minerals during Regionals last year,the identification part involved some blurry pictures of various specimens and maybe one or two actual rocks. I think they actually had a couple questions on crystal structures(with-you guessed it- blurry pictures). My partner and I didn't use the loupe at all, and almost forgot it in the lab.

[ktscioly23]

Here's one: Dynamic Planet at regionals was poorly run because proctor didn't show up, so teams were waiting outside for 40 minutes, until they gave up. Proctors said they would just make it up next block, however a girl competing had Crime Busters next block. Ended up having to make it up 3:00-4:00 pm.

[UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F]

I got one. Rustin Invitationals 2015 for Picture This!
There was a bunch of wrong scheduling and we ended up going two or three 5-minute blocks after we were supposed to.
We had to go around 10 minutes after the next 50-minute period started.

[samlan16]

Sigh, here's what happened to me today at regionals. I will keep updating as more stories come out. Note this is the same place that ran our state tournament last year.

ExpD- Same test as state. But here's the catch: they gave us no materials. What happened was since it was a lab about flipping coins, the proctor got on his computer, used a simulation, and projected it for everyone, meaning we all had the same data. Since nothing could be qualified as an independent variable, dependent variable, or anything that could be measured with SI units, it was just counting. We followed the national rubric as always and eventually figured out what was wanted, but the proctor knew nothing about the event. Even though we got 2 1sts and a 2nd at relatively difficult invitationals this year, we got 16th due to his negligence. (And not to mention that not doing an experiment is a violation of the spirit of the event.)

Chem Lab- The proctor made the test up the night before; by that I mean taking the state test from last year and adding one more experiment. There were 4 titrations, which don't even fall under either stoich or kinetics, an iodine clock, and a lab about gas laws. He started the event 15 minutes late and did not time it; as a result, the event ran 20 minutes into the next round. I had to cut out early to make it to CompMach.

CompMach- Reused the B DIVISION SIMPLE MACHINES TEST from state last year. It was so easy that my brother finished in 5 minutes, and I checked it over in 1. For the lever testing, the loops on the weights were way too small, and we took twice as long to finish than normal. (And for a tidbit of entertainment, which of the following is not a simple machine? A) inclined plane B) screw C) car. Obviously I changed the answer choices to avoid getting penalized, but it was just as ridiculous.)

Anyway, despite all this, kudos to the awesome Forensics and Bungee proctors who knew what they were doing and did it well!