Academic Team Meet

Today, I got up at 5:15am to follow the girl's academic teams' bus and watch the meet today.  It took me a bit to catch on to their format: A "toss-up" question is asked and any one on either team can buzz in and earn 10 points with a correct answer.  Then that team gets first crack to answer 3 "bonus" questions that the team can confer briefly and produce an answer together.  If their answer is wrong, the other team gets a chance to give a correct answer.  Each correct bonus answer is also worth 10 points.  A total of 20 toss-up questions are asked, so a minimum of 20 questions up to 80 questions are asked.

It was excruciating to watch.  It was all I could do not to yell, "C'mon Man!"  It was so frustrating to watch questions the kids should know go unanswered or incorrectly.  Les Miserables!  Adrenalin!  de Tocqueville!  war of 1812!  Mark Twain!  The teachers/coaches said they keep busy with scorekeeping to not get distracted with wrong answers.  I wish I had had more Words with Friends games going on.

To the girl's credit she did answer some questions that surprised me so I was pleased to hear her buzz in and say Libya, Phillip II, Soviet Union, New England Patriots, and Genji.  And despite that her team didn't make it to the semi-finals (there are 3 teams from her school), the girl ranked 4th overall of all competitors (about 40) in correct answers. 

A bonus for me driving 80 miles out for this meet:

Gas for less than $3 ($2.919)!

I'd say this was pretty much a good day, right?