I volunteered in January to be a part of this "Science Event" development team to work on the Microbiology part. Two of my peers and I were the helpers. I had a lot of fun. Don't get me wrong, it was incredibly stressful and I think I scared both of my collaborators when my finely hidden enthusiasm for microbiology emerged. I get much too excited over these things. I mean, I think about it a lot. I can't lie. I've wanted to work with diseases and causative agents since I was in middle school and this desire has not waned. It grew. Lovely. But I hide my excitement...by being very sedate and trying not to look at things too long.
But anyway, I did a lot of work for this. I guess it was a mixed blessing/curse not having my regular micro job last week...for one, I got rather depressed not having any micro to do, but I found out rather quickly that I had more to do than I had originally thought. So, more time ftw!
The three of us actually pieced everything together. I mean everything! We didn't steal any questions. We read everything that the teams were supposed to know. We went around getting the samples we'd need. We rewrote questions to fit what we could obtain. We fixed questions last minute to make way for plans that had fallen through.
I personally, proofread our questions, made an answer key and an answer sheet.
Fun story! We needed a slide of Gram + bacteria (Gram stained purple). We asked the head of the event at our school, but she doesn't deal with bacteria, so she told us to ask our Microbiology teacher. However, he was out of town. So, one of us (not me) emailed him to check if he may have any prepared slides we could use. But then we got word that our specific adviser for the micro event had prepared slides, so we were relieved. But the day of, we discovered that her prepared slides were really old and fading and all the Gram + Micrococcus luteus looked red. (how confusing). And then we heard from the head that she had talked to our Micro teacher who was going to make us Gram stains. But was told we already had them. Damn it! *Note: I thought that the gesture to make us the Gram stains was very kind.
So, we got into the Micro lab and I made the Gram stain with old M. luteus which turned out a lot better than I expected. The adviser said it was perfectly fine. When we took it to another microscope, I liked it better.
Anyway, I think we made the test too hard even by following the guidelines for what they should have known. I can't say anything specific and I won't. Other than the Gram stain part.