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-
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.