Thursday, November 17, 2005

The Matrix

Several weeks ago, a colleague asked me if I would be willing to judge a local middle school science fair (yesterday I said that it was an honor to be chosen as a judge, but it's really not - they'll take anyone). I said yes and put it on my calendar for the 16th.

So as I'm getting in the shower yesterday morning (a little late since G and I had been up late the night before working on the bathroom), I remember that I'm supposed to judge that science fair on Wednesday. So that's tomorrow since today's Tuesday. Or is it Wednesday? I'm not sure. Tuesday, I think. No, Wednesday. Yes, it's definitely Wednesday. And I'm definitely going to be late.

There were four judges. Two of us would judge the biology category, and two would judge the physical science category. So they split the projects in half and we judged away. No problem. Then I remembered why I hadn't judged this particular fair in recent years . . . The Matrix.

You would think that judging a middle school science fair would be relatively simple - you look at the projects, narrow the field to the best ones, and maybe have a powwow with the other judges to pick a winner.

Not at this school. No, sir. Each judge must give each project a numerical score and then rank the projects based on those scores. Then these rankings must be converted into a numerical score again as they are entered into The Matrix. The Matrix allows the scores to be added, which results in the total score for each project. This can then be converted into project rankings.

Complicated? Yes. Unbelievably and unnecessarily so.

Long (as in it took over three hours to judge 32 projects) story short, all the judges ended up having to judge all the projects instead of only half. And then we had to do The Matrix not once, twice, or even three times, but four times. Trust me when I say this was not a streamlined process any of those times.

So I think it is entirely possible that the reason I almost forgot to go to the science fair is because my subconscious remembered The Matrix, even though I had tried to block it out.

(Stay tuned for quotes tomorrow.)

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