My class
Academic Decathlon
It is the one class that I refuse to ever give up. You see, AcaDeca is more than just a class for me anymore. It’s my family.
I began the class in my freshman year of high school. I was terrified to be in it but I wanted out of art, so I really didn’t care much. The class was really small. In fact, we had the bare minimum of 6 members in the very beginning. I still don’t think we ever had the full 9 that are allowed.
It was always so quiet. That was the year that we actually studied independently in class. My speech was the LAMEST speech I have ever made. It was about advertising and the one side of things. It was interesting, I will admit, but I did not deliver it well at all. I was a nervous wreck.
Bo was so much better than I was, and it pissed me off to no end. You see, I’m one of those people that have to be the best when given the chance, and Bo beat me at every turn. When I would win a silver, he would take the gold. Even when I won a silver and he couldn’t beat me, he tied me. I just plain couldn’t get above him. I HATED him.
I suppose it would help to explain the way AcaDeca works. There is a team of six to eight players. There are three overall categories; Honors, Scholastic, and Varsity. The Honors category contained the 3.6-4.0 grade point averages, the Scholastic was above a 2.9, and Varsity was everything below. The grades that make up that GPA are far different from your normal GPA. I fell in the Scholastic category for my freshman and sophomore years. Now I am in the Honors. –kicks her grades- Must fail…
In any case, you have 8 tasks, 7 tests and 2 vocal type tests; Literature, Mathematics, History/Social Science, Economics, Music, Art, and a two part Super Quiz make up the tests, and the two part speech and interview make up the vocal type tests. The curriculum is changed every year. For instance, my freshman year, the theme was “American Dreams.” Our super quiz was over the Lewis and Clark Expedition, our literature was over a series of poems and a novel called Death to the Archbishop. Our music section was… oh… I never pay attention to the music, and our art was… actually…. Freshman year we never even saw a single art piece. ^^’ Let me warn you, the things we cover are not normal curriculum. We are forced to learn more than what we are taught in school. The mathematics alone goes about Trigonometry and Calculus, and I'm still in Pre-Calculus! We are supposed to be doing these tests on a college level. Scary, no'
The tests are scored as a total of 1000 points per section. The Super Quiz is split into two parts, a written test and an oral test. The oral is just 5 questions, and it just like taking the written test only the questions are projected off of a screen and read aloud to you. Wow. ^_~ The speech is split into a pre-prepared speech and an impromptu speech. It’s actually pretty damn challenging.
As I explained earlier, there are 3 categories. Well, a maximum of 3 people can compete in one category, and a minimum of 2. When you take the tests, the top 2 scores from each category are taken and put in the team overall score. Confusing' I know. In the end, there is an awards ceremony! Yay!
They give out medals to competitors in each category for each subject. For example, this year I won the gold medal for Speech in the district competition. That means that my score beat every other person’s score who gave a speech. When I won the gold for literature, I beat everyone one, from every school with my score. Make sense' Good! After they give out those medals, they do a top 3 from each category. So basically, they take the Varsity players and they take all the competitors’ overall personal scores and rank the Varsity category. Make sense' No' Read it again a few times then. Still don’t get it' Here.
I am in Honors this year. After I took all of my tests, I had an overall personal score of 4,267 points ( Out of a possible 10,000, pathetic right' My ranking overall for the entire competition was like 6th, so there! Other people sucked too! ) David had an overall score of 4,659. He was in the Honors category as well. He obviously beat my socks, the only one on the team who did, mind you. He won first place over all of the students playing in the Honors category. Still doesn’t make sense' Ah well. Not that important.
Then they do an overall top three for everyone who tested, altogether, throwing the categories in the trash. David won first in that two. –kicks him- Also, they do a top 3 teams for super quiz. Weird, no' Anyway, after that, finally, they do the overall top 3 teams. The top 2 teams get to go to state! Wh00p! We get to go to state this year! Wh00p! We only won second! Boo! ^_~
The point of this whole page? I adore AcaDeca. It is my class.
Deal with it.
