I also went to the WSSL meet yesterday, and got pretty annoyed at the anatomy test too. WSSL seems to do this thing where they either put events that aren't part of the year's official events on the meet schedule or use the topics from the wrong year, although they didn't use 2015-16's topics last year, so it's strange that they did it this year. I think standardization for WSSL will be difficult because each school makes their own tests, so everything is at the discretion of the school, but the state meet will still be up to date with the national topics. Hopefully WSSL changes this in the future.DrakonidOperative wrote:Today was our first regional meet (which contained A + P), and there were some interesting results. As one of the leaders for our team, I was in charge or managing the anatomy and phys team and help them prepare for the meet through practice questions and exposure to resources. When it was time for the meet, the questions we got were on the three systems last year: nervous system, endocrine system, and sensory organs! I naturally assumed that the anatomy and physiology systems rotated out every year starting from the 2015-2016 year on a four year cycle, so there was no reason to believe that we would be tested on these three systems because they were last years' systems. Me and my team have been preparing the respiratory, digestive, and immune systems for four weeks leading up to the regional meet and it was quite frustrating that a lot of work was put to waste in the time being (though it will be helpful for state preparation probably).
What ended up happening was that the regional coordinators posted last year's event description and thus the questions were focused on last year's event descriptions. I never knew that the regional event descriptions overruled the national rule and it was a hard way to learn about this rule today. Now leading up to the state meet, I do not know what to expect for Anatomy and Physiology. Will we be tested on last year's systems or this year's systems?
Overall, I will take the blame for not checking these event descriptions and for assuming that the meet will be testing the three current systems, but I believe there should be some sort of standardization throughout the state (I'm in MA).
Also my buddies in Astronomy was not permitted to have access to internet-less laptops despite the rules/event description (posted by the regional coordinators) stating that it was allowed to bring two laptops as long as they are not connected to the internet. They were forced to take the test without any resources (binders/laptops) because that spent their time in preparation for the meet organizing resources on their laptops, not expecting that they were only permitted binders.
It's strange you didn't know about the changes in the topics and the astro no-laptop policy. Our coach got an email from the WSSL director with the topics and no-laptop rule and told us about it-maybe you should ask your coach about this before future meets or something.
