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[Lightningfalcon]

Combination of sad and rage, but I only felt like making a single overly long post.
Sad part- Got third place in the state academic competition today.  For nearly a decade we haven't gotten lower then second.   And what makes it more humiliating is that our rival school had BOTH their teams beat us, and our B team didn't even make it to the consolation round, let alone the semi-finals.  Next year I will probably be the commander, and it's almost guaranteed that we will get first, due to how their best person graduating, but it still feels terrible. 
Rage part- A good part of the reason we lost was just really, really terrible luck.      There was only a single history category, which is our teams greatest strength.   Of those we managed to get four out of the five questions.    But ALL the rest of the categories were things like leadership.   The reason we are terrible at that category?   The only way to actually know the answers are to memorize them from the textbooks.   Why?   The questions are ambiguous as hell.  Here are a few examples-

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Question- What should a leader do when he learns that a decision was unethical? 
Our answer- Work to correct it. 
"Correct" answer- Question what he should do next.   
Question- "What is the most valued quality a leader should have?
Our answer-Honesty
"Correct" answer-integrity
Question-What is the most valued quality of a follower?
Our answer- Integrity
"Correct" answer- honesty
And my favorite, the parts where the questions are not just wrong from our point of view, and can be argued with, but the part where the answer is either factually wrong, or where the answer isn't what the question is asking for
Question- What are decks above the main deck called?
Our answer- Partial Deck
"Correct" answer- Forecastle (That is a specific type of partial deck)
Question- -name and rate of some person- has been assigned as -some position- on the CVN-68.   What type of ship should he look for?
Our answer- Aircraft Carrier.   When prompted we said Nuclear aircraft carrier.
"Correct" answer- The USS Nimitz.   
Question- How are squads numbered in a platoon in a formation?
Our answer-  From the front to the rear, left to the right
"Correct" answer- From the front to the rear, right to the left.  (To quickly prove this.   Let's have three people, one behind the other.  The one in front is 1, person behind him is 2, and the person in the rear is 3.  Now have them turn right.    The person on the left is 1, then to his right is 2, and then to his right is 3.)

The other main reason we lost was that a member of our team was absent for some reason or the other.   While having him there probably wouldn't of had us win the competition, he definitely would of made the math a lot closer.   We have a system where we have specific people to replace others, as we each study specific categories.   However, the person who was supposed to replace the absentee wasn't able to make it either, so we had to replace him with a person who, while good, is mostly redundant when it comes to what the team as a whole knows.       

[Helgoland]

You can use impure one in starting fluid from auto parts store. It's ether mixed with some petroleum products. Obviously, flammable as fuck.

There is no way this could go wrong.

Fun fact: You can get hammered on ether. Not glue-huffing hammered, proper hammered. The Irish used to do this to evade taxes, apparently.

[Dutchling]

You can use impure one in starting fluid from auto parts store. It's ether mixed with some petroleum products. Obviously, flammable as fuck.

There is no way this could go wrong.

Fun fact: You can get hammered on ether. Not glue-huffing hammered, proper hammered. The Irish used to do this to evade taxes, apparently.

Irishmen don't have to pay taxes when drunk?

[TD1]

You can use impure one in starting fluid from auto parts store. It's ether mixed with some petroleum products. Obviously, flammable as fuck.

There is no way this could go wrong.

Fun fact: You can get hammered on ether. Not glue-huffing hammered, proper hammered. The Irish used to do this to evade taxes, apparently.

Irishmen don't have to pay taxes when drunk?

Yeah, I wondered what that meant too. Then I settled on that the booze was probably was taxed and the other stuff not taxed.

[Dutchling]

You can use impure one in starting fluid from auto parts store. It's ether mixed with some petroleum products. Obviously, flammable as fuck.

There is no way this could go wrong.

Fun fact: You can get hammered on ether. Not glue-huffing hammered, proper hammered. The Irish used to do this to evade taxes, apparently.

Irishmen don't have to pay taxes when drunk?

Yeah, I wondered what that meant too. Then I settled on that the booze was probably was taxed and the other stuff not taxed.

I'm sticking with my explanation.

[Knit tie]

-snip-

That's just unfair. How many of the questions were this ambiguous? Can you appeal to whoever's in charge?

You are studying in a military academy, I presume? Our family's friend, a colonel, used to tell us that whenever they had a competition of some sorts in his officer school, the tasks or questions were laughably asinine and the place you got was completely unrelated to your actual skill or performance, so I guess this problem is not limited to Russia.

[TD1]

I think you mean wisdom. Intelligence is knowing things. Wisdom is being able to utilise that knowledge for the best possible effect.

[Knit tie]

Question- What should a leader do when he learns that a decision was unethical? 
Our answer- Work to correct it. 
"Correct" answer- Question what he should do next.   
Question- "What is the most valued quality a leader should have?
Our answer-Honesty
"Correct" answer-integrity
Question-What is the most valued quality of a follower?
Our answer- Integrity
"Correct" answer- honesty

Those sound like opinions.

I think that the best thing a leader can have is intelligence, because then they know what to do should they balls up, and know what the best decision, at least for whoever they lead, is.

The question of "best" is more often than not entirely subjective, unfortunately, so no matter how you answer those questions, you can be wrong.

[Helgoland]

You can use impure one in starting fluid from auto parts store. It's ether mixed with some petroleum products. Obviously, flammable as fuck.

There is no way this could go wrong.

Fun fact: You can get hammered on ether. Not glue-huffing hammered, proper hammered. The Irish used to do this to evade taxes, apparently.

Irishmen don't have to pay taxes when drunk?

Yeah, I wondered what that meant too. Then I settled on that the booze was probably was taxed and the other stuff not taxed.

I'm sticking with my explanation.

Yup, alcohol was heavily taxed, but ether wasn't. Plus ether has some fun dissociative effects and doesn't leave much of a hangover.

[TD1]

Tell a friend? Family member? Teacher? Councillor? PM someone you trust? Entrust it to the masses via facebook? (Not what I choose, but that does seem the popular method of debasing oneself these days)

[TD1]

Two words. BAR. FIGHT.

[Lightningfalcon]

-snip-

That's just unfair. How many of the questions were this ambiguous? Can you appeal to whoever's in charge?

You are studying in a military academy, I presume? Our family's friend, a colonel, used to tell us that whenever they had a competition of some sorts in his officer school, the tasks or questions were laughably asinine and the place you got was completely unrelated to your actual skill or performance, so I guess this problem is not limited to Russia.

The majority of the questions were things like "What was the primary Japanese objective in the battle of the Leyte Gulf", "Give the three parts of the nuclear triad", or "Give the first international space flight".    The round semi-final round was almost entirely questions like that, and we absolutely steamrolled that round.   
Unfortunately the school that was hosting it is somewhat notorious for being very strict with the answers.   The person in charge did give some leeway, but it was mainly in the area where you have to give sentence long answers.
This is for an NJROTC unit.   I'm also part of the regular school academic team, but on there we only really compete on the county level.  Mainly because we can never actually put a team together for the state competition, since everyone always has something that was already planned for that weekend by the time it is announced.   

[Knit tie]

I don't really know if there are many things you can do on a weekend that are more important than representing your county in a competition.

[Tiruin]

I really know how that feels Lightningfalcon. >.>
Some really unflexible questions.

[Frumple]

I don't really know if there are many things you can do on a weekend that are more important than representing your county in a competition.

Haha, I could think of quite a few. Starting with taking a nap! Or cooking breakfast. It just kinda works its way up from there, really...

... I'll admit, though. I'm biased towards ranking most competition as fairly low on the proverbial value pole. Don't have much use for the stuff, especially if it's for someone else's pride. Playful like's a'ight sometimes -- games and whatnot -- but most stuff beyond that just rubs me th'wrong way.