Poorly Run Event Stories

[_deltaV]

On the topic of MIT, I didn't do bridge myself, but apparently the autoloaders didn't work, and the proctor let a team keep pouring sand when the bucket was resting on the ground. Also, apparently the scoring was waaaaay off. Hopefully someone who did the event can verify.

As with any event there are variables and for a lot of teams including ours, the autoloaders were a new one. That really messed up our second team but my partner and I did fine with them and scored first place. As for the supervisors, they were super on-the-ball and were very careful with every aspect of the rules. If the scoring was off, they corrected it before the awards were given out.

[JonB]

On the topic of MIT, I didn't do bridge myself, but apparently the autoloaders didn't work, and the proctor let a team keep pouring sand when the bucket was resting on the ground. Also, apparently the scoring was waaaaay off. Hopefully someone who did the event can verify.

As with any event there are variables and for a lot of teams including ours, the autoloaders were a new one. That really messed up our second team but my partner and I did fine with them and scored first place. As for the supervisors, they were super on-the-ball and were very careful with every aspect of the rules. If the scoring was off, they corrected it before the awards were given out.

Yeah, the autoloaders were "sticky" but there was nothing directly wrong with them (although I never saw the loader on the left side being used so I cannot speak for that one). As far as I know, scoring was correctly and accurately done.

[Fanglin]

We just had our first invitational at Rockford, and boy, the supervisors there were completely out of their minds. First of all, in Air trajectory, the gave us 8 minutes to assemble our machine, and to shoot. Also, even worse, the dude running it was running two lanes at a time, so we got like half of the time, because he didn't pause it. For Bottle Rockets, they gave Daniel Wright a really high score, even though I saw them shoot, and I timed them. For Road Scholar, the dude who wrote the test, ordered the wrong map, and I had to explain to him that PLSS is not the same as UTM and some other stuff. So I waisted a ton of time, which ended us 0.1 points behind first place. The grader for meteorology must have just been a volunteer, who knew none of the curriculum and must have been just grading off an answer sheet. We had a ton of questions that were right, but they marked wrong. That is why, for study events, you should actually have someone who knows the topic grade the tests, because then, if something is not "word for word" the they still might see what you mean, and mark it right. Anyway, it was really frustrating. I hope it is better at our next competition.

[windu34]

We just had our first invitational at Rockford, and boy, the supervisors there were completely out of their minds. First of all, in Air trajectory, the gave us 8 minutes to assemble our machine, and to shoot. Also, even worse, the dude running it was running two lanes at a time, so we got like half of the time, because he didn't pause it. For Bottle Rockets, they gave Daniel Wright a really high score, even though I saw them shoot, and I timed them. For Road Scholar, the dude who wrote the test, ordered the wrong map, and I had to explain to him that PLSS is not the same as UTM and some other stuff. So I waisted a ton of time, which ended us 0.1 points behind first place. The grader for meteorology must have just been a volunteer, who knew none of the curriculum and must have been just grading off an answer sheet. We had a ton of questions that were right, but they marked wrong. That is why, for study events, you should actually have someone who knows the topic grade the tests, because then, if something is not "word for word" the they still might see what you mean, and mark it right. Anyway, it was really frustrating. I hope it is better at our next competition.

A lot of smaller invitationals and many regionals are supervised purely by parent volunteers therefore it isn't common for events to be run improperly due to lack of knowledge. Of course, that is no excuse for not reading through the rules a couple times and checking soinc.org for clarifications. I understand why build events are improperly run so often: the rules are complex to the untrained individual and often can be interpreted different ways (no matter how ridiculous), but study events should be run by someone who at least has some background in the topic.

[Boombloxer]

In Bottle Rocket at an invitational, the proctors thought that the only thing you could have was a 2 liter bottle, and basically disqualified everyone :O

[samlan16]

In Bottle Rocket at an invitational, the proctors thought that the only thing you could have was a 2 liter bottle, and basically disqualified everyone :O

A similar story: the Food Science students I coach recently were given half credit on their notebooks because they used the outline on the CD instead of the one on soinc.org.

Proctors: please be aware of General Rules 1 and 5. Anything not explicitly stated is permitted, and you must give the least restrictive penalty for legitimate infractions!

[Eat_Sleep_SO]

We just had our first invitational at Rockford, and boy, the supervisors there were completely out of their minds. First of all, in Air trajectory, the gave us 8 minutes to assemble our machine, and to shoot. Also, even worse, the dude running it was running two lanes at a time, so we got like half of the time, because he didn't pause it. For Bottle Rockets, they gave Daniel Wright a really high score, even though I saw them shoot, and I timed them. For Road Scholar, the dude who wrote the test, ordered the wrong map, and I had to explain to him that PLSS is not the same as UTM and some other stuff. So I waisted a ton of time, which ended us 0.1 points behind first place. The grader for meteorology must have just been a volunteer, who knew none of the curriculum and must have been just grading off an answer sheet. We had a ton of questions that were right, but they marked wrong. That is why, for study events, you should actually have someone who knows the topic grade the tests, because then, if something is not "word for word" the they still might see what you mean, and mark it right. Anyway, it was really frustrating. I hope it is better at our next competition.

Bruhh I am from Daniel wright bottle rockets and we got 2 17 second flights so get your facts straight

[Eat_Sleep_SO]

We just had our first invitational at Rockford, and boy, the supervisors there were completely out of their minds. First of all, in Air trajectory, the gave us 8 minutes to assemble our machine, and to shoot. Also, even worse, the dude running it was running two lanes at a time, so we got like half of the time, because he didn't pause it. For Bottle Rockets, they gave Daniel Wright a really high score, even though I saw them shoot, and I timed them. For Road Scholar, the dude who wrote the test, ordered the wrong map, and I had to explain to him that PLSS is not the same as UTM and some other stuff. So I waisted a ton of time, which ended us 0.1 points behind first place. The grader for meteorology must have just been a volunteer, who knew none of the curriculum and must have been just grading off an answer sheet. We had a ton of questions that were right, but they marked wrong. That is why, for study events, you should actually have someone who knows the topic grade the tests, because then, if something is not "word for word" the they still might see what you mean, and mark it right. Anyway, it was really frustrating. I hope it is better at our next competition.

Bruhh I am from Daniel wright bottle rockets and we got 2 17 second flights so get your facts straight

And it doesn't really matter bcuz we got 30 total points

[Eat_Sleep_SO]

Anyway at Rockford the crime busters people had nooooo idea what they were doing and we asked them a million questions. Then we asked where the mystery chromatography strip was that we had to match and they said "oh, I think you just pick whichever one you want" and then we asked again and they said "the pens are on the front table"

[Unome]

Anyway at Rockford the crime busters people had nooooo idea what they were doing and we asked them a million questions. Then we asked where the mystery chromatography strip was that we had to match and they said "oh, I think you just pick whichever one you want" and then we asked again and they said "the pens are on the front table"

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