Evaluation > Sleep

Note the title should be read as ‘evaluation is greater than sleep’ not ‘evaluation leads to / then sleep’!

TL;DR: No pretty pictures in this one. If you don’t care about FPS evaluation you can probably skip this post. There was a lot of evaluating and I barely slept.

So 6.00 comes we grab dinner and get ready, then it’s time for shout-outs. This was something that had come up, but a foreign concept to me as it’s something we’ve never done in Australia. Basically, it’s how UPs are scored, and suspect ones checked and IC (and apparently some other affiliates). I was evaluating middle teams, so I was with the group of middle evaluators. We paired off and started scoring UPs. There was a lot of them. For each UP you marked the structure and focus and adequacy. Turns out we were just supposed to categorise focus & adequacy A – E which gives you a range of scores, but Andrew and I accidentally gave them real numbers, but it didn’t matter much. These may or may not be UPs in your bundle but the idea is that all the UPs are scored before you start evaluating. Anything you think is dodgy or flawed you and your partner have to discuss with another group. Then all the results are put in to a spreadsheet and scanned so you know how to make all your UPs. It works, but it is a long process. Middle, as the biggest group were the last to finish, so it was after 9.30pm before we could actually get to evaluating. The evaluations were due at 12.00 on Friday so I had about 14 hours. (but I wanted to sleep in there somewhere right?)

Sorry, that was a long paragraph! At the meeting earlier we had been told that our bundles would be at most 8 booklets (for teams) and probably less for the individuals, apparently most booklets had 6 or 7. I didn’t find out til later (as we were still waiting for some international booklets to come in) but I had 8 middle team booklets and 7 individual senior booklets. Chatting to other evaluators it sounds like I managed to get two of the biggest bundles. So 14 hours, 15 booklets and middle or senior teams so they generally write a bit and at IC you don’t expect many blanks. Also, different eval guidelines and you do write comments at IC unlike the Australia finals. It was shaping up to be a ‘fun’ night. I usually have a glass of red wine with my evaluating in Australia and I expected I was going to miss it by the time the night was over. I was right.

So I got cracking, but I started slow. I was tired, comments take time and apart from my certification this was my first time using FPSOnline. I’m so glad I had my iPad, because a lot of booklets were traditional so just a PDF and being able to have the booklet and evaluation open at the same time was essential. By about 1am a hit a wall but I had about 12 booklets to go so sleep didn’t look likely. In the end I dozed for about 2 hours, in my chair, with a blanket wrapped around me. When I woke the inevitability of the approaching deadline motivated me along with cups of coffee, tea and sparkling water. I finished the team booklets at about 11.30, 30 minutes before they were due. I went downstairs to find we’d be given a hour extension! I grabbed some lunch and went and got started on my senior individuals. There were due at 2, moved to 3. Sure, individuals are quicker, but just over 3 hours was going to be a stretch but I worked fast and with a few short breaks finished at 3.10 – not too bad. After that I was exhausted. Evaluation wasn’t over but it would be a few hours before we would be ready to start again.

I had a chance for a break so I walked down to the student centre and got a coffee. It was good to stretch my legs, see the sunlight, get some fresh air. Oh and the caffeine was fantastic! So, we’re at Friday afternoon. That’s enough for this post and I’m slowly catch up to today. (Finally enough, not much happened in isolation so they will be short posts!)