Life

We're kind of tired around here tonight.  I took Kaylee to school today with her science fair project, dropped it off and set it up a bit, ran a few errands and then had a flight in the Viking before lunch.  Fortunately everything worked well on it, and one hour and three landings later, we tucked it away with absolutely no squawks from the flight.  That's what I call a success.  After lunch I ran the 340 up and around for a few minutes for a post-maintenance check flight, and everything went smoothly there, too.  I got a text from Kaylee that her project had just been judged, the judge was friendly and said she did very well, and she said the other kids thought she'd get Grand Prize, and she was hoping for that or First.   So tonight at 6 pm we went back over to the school for the results, and they weren't what she hoped for-she ended up with Second place.  All kids got either Grand, First, Second or Third.  Her project looked nice, one of the nicer looking ones there, but it wasn't overly complicated, and the projects that won Grand and First were the ones that had taken the kids a lot longer to do, to collect data over time, etc.  Her project took about two hours to collect data, not nearly the time input that many of the others had. She was pretty disappointed anyway.  When we were there, one of her classmates saw her 2nd place mark and said "Whoa, we thought you'd get Grand Prize!"  That didn't make her feel any better.  ;) We explained that the judges obviously took the difficulty of the project into account and how she did well with what she had, but we did agree with her on one thing.  Some of the kids who got Second, and even one who got First, they hadn't taken any time or effort at all on their actual board.  They hand wrote unevenly in pen on the top, had hand-written or scribbled notes, etc., and by 6th grade, you don't have to make it look like a professional, but you can use a ruler and a colored marker and at least make it look straight and neat.  I painted her board (and my hand) black, but she printed out on color paper, she taped it all on the board where she wanted it, she found the photos and printed them out, she typed out the text, and I wonder if they think that if it looked nice that maybe the parents did it all whereas it was quite obvious the kid did it him/herself on the others.  I don't know.  I'm sorry she didn't get the score she was hoping for, but it's not a terrible life lesson.  Here are two projects given the same grade--I didn't want to take a photo of the handwritten ones with a crowd around and be...gauche.

Aferwards we went to Panera, for which Steve had some gift cards, and we had a nice dinner celebrating the end of Science Fair, and Second Place.  I don't think 7th Grade does Science Fair, and that right there's another reason to celebrate.  ;)