venules wrote:daydreamer0023 wrote:And the NC version of CB/Forensics is so watered down... :'(
I think our Forensics team said something similar, but oddly enough, one of my partners did Chem Lab and she said that there was a station where only one team knew how to complete it. NC events seem pretty variable in general, but why would similar (chemistry-related) events be run so differently? I get that there's different supervisors and all, but given that NCSO appears to have instated a statewide test format for Anatomy & Physiology, why not do something similar for events that are related? It would probably be more difficult for lab events than study/inquiry events, but still.
edited to clarify: each event has different requirements, evidently, but I mean a system that ensures each event is on the same level of difficulty at each tournament.
Anatomy in NC is run by two very young ESs (Enloe 2017, NCSSM 2015) who were both former state champions, so it makes sense that it’d be run well.
There’s definitely a lot of variablility in test quality in NC, although they’re generally quite good and even the bad ones are not as bad as other states (NJ... yikes).
Specifically:
Astro was excellent. I’ve only taken it once, but I understand it’s that good every year.
Disease was okay in the two years I took it (2016, 17) but much too easy. It was harder this year, apparently, which is great.
Microbe was way too easy last year, but this year it was fantastic. Better than the national exam, in many ways. Cell bio in 2016 was also quite good. I’m not sure what happened to Microbe in 2017, but it was too easy and not particularly interesting.
Remote has always focused a little too much on having random facts in your notes. We were fortunate to have a whole diagram in our notes at states last year that helped us get 4th. The points we got from that probably accounted for 20% of our test. Without it we may not have medaled. This year a lot of questions (VIIRS especially) emphasizes trivial knowledge too much. Also, we lost lots of points because we didn’t have sin or cos on our calculator.
Thermo tests have been bad, generally. There were errors on the answer key, bad questions in general, AND they graded our test wrong (literally didn’t add the points up right) and cost us 4-5 places. If the scores were closer, it might have cost our team a trip to nats. Needless to say, I hope to volunteer for thermo next year.
