This past week, I had the opportunity to participate in Academic Quadrathalon. Quadrathlon is an Animal Science Competition between four member teams. The teams compete in four various categories: quiz bowl, written exam, lab practical, and oral presentations. Last year, my team placed 3rd Overall in the competition, so this year our goal was to win the competition. We started on Monday night with the written exam and lab practical. The exam was 14 pages long and we had one hour to complete it. It consisted of various multiple choice, true/false, and problems. After the exam, we completed the lab practical. The lab practical had eight different stations including beef, swine, equine, sheep, dairy, poultry, meat science, and laboratory. This part was a lot of fun, especially since we were able to apply some of the hands on knowledge that we had learned in class.
On Tuesday, we participated in the quiz bowl and gave our oral presentation. The oral presentation had to be between 10 -14 minutes long. We gave our presentation on the impact of ethanol on animal agriculture. We ended up placing first in our room, so we were able to move onto finals on Wednesday night. We had to go through three rounds of quiz bowl, before we advanced on to the finals that were also on Wednesday night. Quiz bowl is always a lot of fun because it is so fast paced.
I was extremely nervous when I woke up Wednesday morning because I knew we needed to win at least one final tonight to have a chance at winning the overall competition. We spent four hours Wednesday afternoon working on our presentation. When we finally arrived at the Alumni Center Wednesday evening for finals, my stomach was a nervous wreck. We had to compete in Quiz Bowl first. We were up against the same team that had knocked us out of quiz bowl the year before. We ended up winning the finals by a score of 100 - 50. We also ended up taking first place in the presentation. When the results were announced we ended up winning the overall competition by one point. Whew!! Talk about being close. Now, we are preparing for the Regional Competition in Des Moines, IA in March. We hope we can represent K-State well!!
~Rebecca
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