Competition Results

So today was the big College of Engineering-wide design competitions. There were two, a poster competition for most innovative design, and a presentation competition for best presentation. The chemical engineers swept both (my team was sent to compete in the presentation one). The chemicals really did have the best presentation, so I don't think we could have won. Unfortunately, our presentation was not as good as it could have been. One of our team members (who's rather nervous about public speaking) slowed right down and stumbled over his part, so the rest of us had to rush quite a bit. Also, one member of our group didn't do a very good job with the questions (he was the guy left standing with the microphone at the end of the presentation). He didn't repeat back the questions so the audience could hear (which our supervisor had said to do just a few minutes beforehand) and he barely even looked at the rest of us before answering the questions himself. I'm really not mad at the guy who slowed us down, just disappointed (some people simply find public speaking hard). However, I'm really angry at the other guy because in the last few weeks he's consistently shown that he doesn't care about the competition and doesn't care about the fact the rest of of us do care. I've always fantasied about winning this competition, so not having done the best job possible because someone doesn't give a darn about his teammates is incredibly frustrating.

The good news: we were one of two groups (out of seven in total) that received an enthusiastic honorable mention from the judges. So we were in the top three of the seven best presentations. Also, unlike engineering physics, some of the disciplines had 15 or 17 design groups, so the number of people we beat is actually largely than being in the top three out of the seven engineering disciplines would suggest.

It's all over but the crying.