Bad partners

[dickyjones]

Meh, it happens. I more or less competed in Entomology alone the entire two years I did it. I had a partner who made ID tests for me a couple times but refused to study for it at all, and I was fine with that arrangement since that gave her more time to work on other events. And you don't really need a partner for station events that much anyways. Best moment was at nats when a team behind us dropped their binder and my partner spent 2 minutes helping them pick up the papers. When the person thanked my partner and apologized, my partner replied, "Oh, don't worry about it, I wasn't doing anything anyways." We got 5th anyways, so it worked out.

It's sometimes nice to blame partners and makes yourself feel better, but the truth is it takes two people to fail an event and only one person to win it (for the most part...obviously Sounds/WIDI and long tests/time crucial lab events like Forensics follow this less). I actually tended to do better in events the less prepared my partner was for the most part. It gives you more incentive to work hard in an event if you know you don't have much of a safety net with your teammate.

[GGuy5]

most of my partners have been great, and the ones that weren't as good still weren't bad
they just had empty areas for improvement

[vofbassist]

It's sometimes nice to blame partners and makes yourself feel better, but the truth is it takes two people to fail an event and only one person to win it (for the most part...obviously Sounds/WIDI and long tests/time crucial lab events like Forensics follow this less). I actually tended to do better in events the less prepared my partner was for the most part. It gives you more incentive to work hard in an event if you know you don't have much of a safety net with your teammate.

I hear that. For our final three competitions of the year, I was placed with the biggest guy on the team, who also happened to be the biggest guy in the school, because our coach had thought it would be nice for me to have help figuring out where the mystery material went. Needless to say, he helped out a lot more than that. I wouldn't have made it through states without him. And thanks to that, we placed third. The other two tournaments before that, I pretty much did all the work in my events, except trajectory because Sliced Bread 34 took care of that. Oh well. We still did good.

[ScienceIsMyLife]

my partner never does anything until cram night, but we work really well together the day of and he's my best friend, so there's not much i can do.

[sk8lynne]

in 7th grade i did WIDI with my friend and she had no interest in Scio what so ever. She didn't even try during regionals. She wasn't even goin to go to regionals cause like a week before she just stopped showing up for practices and decided that she quit without ever telling me. My coach got so mad and told her that she was letting me down nd said that she has to go to the competition. So for regionals, I wrote the directions and when she went to do it, she told me afterwards that she didn't even bother to read my directions. She just but the pieces of candy anywhere she wanted (nd yes she told me this to my face). Ughh i got soo mad cause i actually am a pretty good writer. We ended up getting close to last place because of her.

[sr243]

Well this year i have done every event alone. I built my own bridge, did 90% of the ecology test myself, have my partner hold the flashlight for reach for the stars, wrote down all the answer to meteorology. I just never depended upon others so i ended up doing pretty well. As long as the partner is not annoying, I don't care.

[yoyosciencekid23]

in an event that shall remain nameless i didn't have the best of times with my partner he insisted on leaving our buildind event structure
next to the judges table and some guy sat on our styrofoam box that contained our amazing building event structure that would have earned 1st place.

(who would sit on a styrofoam box)

but anyway he was really mean and didn't do very well with the object

[yoyosciencekid23]

and sk8yllne or something
i feel your pain and it seems like you've got a really great friend there.

[dudeincolorado]

I don't think theres such a thing as a "bad partner". Rather, you can have a partner that doesn't Velcro to you. Sure you could have someone that doesn't do the work, but with a little conviction you can still get them to do work. But, I'm not in much of a position to say, all my partners have been pretty cool