What do you do at practices?

[SOnerd]

We have parties after invites and regionals/state.

[Crzy]

We kind of screw around too, but as the competition gets closer (this weekend ) we get down to business!

[Cheesy Pie]

We kind of screw around too, but as the competition gets closer (this weekend ) we get down to business!

Our competition is this weekend, and we were still screwing around on the last practice before competition.

[Mortem_Haedo]

We meet twice a week, last year (when we formed) we met once a week for an hour but now our coach has conflictions and can only meet 30 minutes twice a week
But we stay after longer with other nice teachers
There are many different types of people. There's this guy with lab events he doesn't really "study" for so he just roams around the room and bothers others. Tech people build and study event people either screw around or just silently study (what I do) which is really BORING and can be done at home, so I eventually stop and screw around too. We meet with partners whenever we want, I do so during lunch xD
Study at home, meet for fun.

[MHSscioly_1]

Can't forget about food. Tonight at Bungee Drop we had Paczkis. Those things are so good.

[1nxtmonster]

Test build it events, eat, study, eat, eat, eat.

[John Richardsim]

What do I do at practices? Practice. Unless I'm tired, in which case I sit there and try to think, unsuccessfully.

[Pigeon]

Eat lunch, haha. And then we go over our events with our partners, maybe update our cheat sheets if we feel up to it. Sometimes we as a team discuss what we're going to do for some of the builds. But mostly we eat!

[ThatRoboGuy]

Most specifically I run through an experiment for Experimental Design, write up a Write-It Do-It, then practice for Metric Mastery.

[Celestite]

So would you guys say that it's more effective to have a practice where everyone eats, plays, makes friends and gets to know each other, or is it better to be studying and practicing with your partners?
I'm sure a lot of answers will say that the best way to go is somewhere in between, but I think that eating and getting to know one another may be a bit more important than studying. It's a large part of science olympiad to have a tight knit community of friends, where everyone supports another, and I'm trying to figure out ways to do that to the science olympiad at my school. I see that a lot of the top scioly teams are very supportive and have a great community, and I'm wondering how they get that kind of feeling on the team.

My school right now uses practices for studying only, and I'm wondering if that's an effective method. In schools that usually do very well, they're always clapping and yelling and getting up to give any medal winners high fives during a medaling ceremony. But in our school, we're only clapping politely for one another. Any suggestions for how to make science olympiad teams stronger and more tight-knit?