Science Fair update

Last night I stayed up late working on a puzzle. Luke started it; it's is one of Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods. The L's have one, and I love it, so when we were in Colorado this summer, I looked at the Trading Post and was thrilled to find one for us! It's a good-size puzzle, over 500 pieces, but (excuse my bragging) Luke is really kicking tail on it! Obviously he takes after his mother! : ) I stayed up working on the sky because I just find doing puzzles so relaxing. What am I stressed about? Well, the science fair. You may recall that back in January I went to a meeting where I thought I would volunteer to set up tables or something for a homeschool science fair maybe to be held that March. No. There was no science fair (yet), and that was the first planning meeting. There were 4 of us there, and I was the only one who had ever even been to a science fair, much less participated in one, judged one, or had any real experience with one. So I leaped out of my comfort zone and signed on. As we've gone on, it has become obvious that I was really needed, especially when the director Katrina (yes, she's heard all the jokes) decided that we needed to become an International Science and Engineering Fair affiliate member. This was because our county, Loudoun County, will not allow homeschooled or private schooled students to participate in their regional science fair, so those students have no possibility of going on the the State or International level. My preference would have been to just have a year or 2 of being a regular fair, where no one goes on to anything, just to determine interest and get the kinks worked out, but Katrina and the other people felt like we needed to "think big". So we plunged on ahead. Becoming ISEF-affiliated requires a ton of paperwork, there are a literal ton of pickly little rules that everyone must adhere to, and there are lots of committees that must be formed involving school administrators, medical doctors, biomedical scientists, science teachers, etc. to evaluate projects plans and make sure they are not too risky. Well, those people simply have not appeared, although we have looked for them. We are also having trouble with Loudoun County cooperating. All they need to do is specifically state to ISEF that they exclude homeschoolers and private schools, but the lady in charge there is not even answering my emails or calls anymore. Grrr. Also, we need to have 50 high school students, and that is a very large number, especially given that we have no idea what the interest level for this even is (not too high, given the stunning lack of volunteers we have gotten so far). I really doubt we could have that many the first year, and I think it would be so much better if we didn't have to! There are lots of little issues that we need to get worked out, but starting out right away with a big fair makes it unlikely those will get worked out, and likely that more will arise. This is all coming to a head now because we have a deadline of Oct. 1 to submit our affiliation package. I'm scared, frankly, that we will go ahead and affiliate, but then we will totally mess something up (which will be on my head, since I am the one in charge of ISEF stuff and am the only one who knows anything about scince fairs). Then we would be on probation, etc. Plus, we are going to have our fair in early March, so obviously timing just isn't very good for us at all, with me being due the end of March. It's certainly not going to be a good time to have to do all the ISEF related after-fair paperwork that they require within 14 days of your fair. So. Katrina and I need to make some decisions the next few days. And then we will need to sort out how it all plays out for this year. I think it would be a lot easier to scale back, but we'll see. I keep wishing I had never gone to that meeting! I'm going to go work some more on that puzzle. . .