Indiana 2015

[GUBAR]

Yea well I'm more concerned with how shoddily the competition was ran.

Oh and thanks to the State Director for telling us to get schools to join S.O. Pretty sure I know whose job that is, and its not ours.

For all you non-seniors out there, good luck next year, and I sincerely hope IU gets their act together, but I know that won't happen.

[Sushies]

Can you give examples of the shoddiness you saw? My events (Chemistry Lab, Protein Modeling, Astronomy) all seemed to be run well, with the Protein Modeling and Astronomy particularly professional. Chemistry Lab had some logistic issues, but I've been to two previous iterations of the event that were at least as bad. The sending one team thing really demolished our morale early in the morning, as last year we saw the pounding Munster gave us and didn't really expect to come out on top of a ~60 score.

The thing about encouraging more schools to do SO, I agree with you on. Although I didn't feel like she put the responsibility on us but was rather just trying to be encouraging. I'm sure ArcelorMittal will fund many new teams over the next year

[Crazy Puny Man]

Anybody who did Astronomy can certainly attest to the rigor of that 32-page exam ("the test is only 32 pages, NOT 39" )

Anyway, I actually did have some complaints about how things were run. When I was a sophomore (2 years ago, heh) I recall that all of the exams that I took (A&P, Astro, Disease, & DP) were rigorous and challenging, and my teammates seemed to give similar feedback for their events. Today, they complained that several events were really easy like Disease (which they said was just a series of questions about the 10 steps), Ento, and Dynamic Planet (my regional exam was about 10x harder hehe ). And then there was that whole deal with A&P reusing questions from previous invites, although I kind of thought it was pointless because it didn't really change the positions of the top 8 (I didn't look past the top 8 for that one), and GeoMaps using the same test as last year. But other events, like Astro, Protein, Compound, Cell Bio (which isn't actually well-run at most tournaments), It's About Time, Green Gen, and TPS (lol I heard that one was brutal) had solid exams.

Putting on a show like this can be pretty hard, and I'll take what I can get because it could DEFINITELY have been much worse. When I was in 8th grade, Purdue Cal hosted state for both divisions and they used the same tests that they did for their regional for about half to 2/3 of all their events, which basically meant that the teams who competed in that regional had a pretty big leg up. And several build events were even worse off; Storm the Castle (Div B here) wasn't given the proper ceiling height, and I think something was up with Wind Power in Div C maybe (though my memory gets hazy there, don't quote me on that). Either way, my team unanimously agrees (er- about as unanimous as it can be, since some of us didn't compete way back in 2011) that IU does a better job with states than Purdue Cal does.

[robotman]

Hello Indiana!
I know that your state just finished, but you guys are the ones who have had the most interactions with Uncle Fester (aka Jerry Elya aka Mission Guy). As Tina said he is not doing great right now. Please please post any fun stories you have about him to his thread, orvideo of Tina's Announcement.

[pikachu4919]

As a member of Carmel's SciOly team, I was disappointed to hear that despite our second place finish, we couldn't go to nats due to the restriction on our state's quota, but maybe from this and the entire season we hoosiers can raise awareness for this so that hopefully our state will grow even more in future years (and be sure to run our events more effectively)

[Sushies]

The astronomy test was amazing. I was lol'ing pretty hard when he said 32 not 39, I expected him to say like 8 not 39 or something along those lines

I have mixed feelings about the 1 team going thing, because if there were two teams going, my team (Bloomington High School South) would have been much more disappointed by our very narrow loss to Carmel for 2nd place as opposed to the ridiculousness that is Munster. We would have been on the very edge of our seats going into the team place announcements and it would've stressed us all out. However, it also raises questions about how much we would have to improve to even have a shot at nationals if Munster keeps putting up these absurd results compared to everyone else going into next year- if we could qualify by getting 2nd, our team would have a chance and there would be a huge push to excel in every event. With the current state of things it's pretty unrealistic for anyone else to qualify in the foreseeable future.

[pikachu4919]

I have mixed feelings about the 1 team going thing, because if there were two teams going, my team (Bloomington High School South) would have been much more disappointed by our very narrow loss to Carmel for 2nd place as opposed to the ridiculousness that is Munster. We would have been on the very edge of our seats going into the team place announcements and it would've stressed us all out. However, it also raises questions about how much we would have to improve to even have a shot at nationals if Munster keeps putting up these absurd results compared to everyone else going into next year- if we could qualify by getting 2nd, our team would have a chance and there would be a huge push to excel in every event. With the current state of things it's pretty unrealistic for anyone else to qualify in the foreseeable future.

That's why I was saying that although they said we're getting our two spots back next year, we as Indiana participants should still push for more participation to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again.

[dcrxcode]

The astronomy test was amazing. I was lol'ing pretty hard when he said 32 not 39, I expected him to say like 8 not 39 or something along those lines

That test was one of the best astro tests I've taken. Hopefully he'll be the event supervisor for the next few years, so we can expect more high quality astronomy tests.

[valjean]

great season, a lot of competition. After science olympiad is over, I feel like I have no purpose in life lol

[Crazy Puny Man]

...or scrambler proctors that can read rules. Grats to the teams that got a 2nd egg after theirs fell off.

I'd just like to point out that, as long as the egg did not break, teams are allowed a second run if their egg falls off in the first run. That is within the boundaries of the rules.

although they said we're getting our two spots back next year

I don't recall them saying that; I just remember them urging for more Indiana schools participating in SO. I don't think anybody can guarantee that for next year, anyhow.

The astronomy test was amazing. I was lol'ing pretty hard when he said 32 not 39, I expected him to say like 8 not 39 or something along those lines

That test was one of the best astro tests I've taken. Hopefully he'll be the event supervisor for the next few years, so we can expect more high quality astronomy tests.

Indeed