Now I Know Why Paula is Crazy

As I posted last week, I was one of the judges for GVU's street painting competition on Sunday.  I judged alongside three new faculty members.  It was fun to judge with them because we had gone through new faculty orientation together and since the start of school we hadn't visited too much. So it was nice to catch up with them. 

It was interesting to see how each individual went about judging the paintings.  We had one judge who made up her own scoring system to aid in her decision, another judge walked slowly around the paintings taking everything in and the other judge (my favorite) looked like he was judging at the Westminster Dog Show. In a very formal manner, he walked swiftly through the paintings as if he knew exactly what he was looking for and then stood at the end of the street gazing over the entire group of the paintings. After a bit a pondering, he made a brisk stroll back through the paintings.  He knew his "Grand Champion" before we had even finished getting halfway through. (Don't worry, I already joked with him about being a dog show judge).  They're all great and we had a good laugh about it!

There was some added pressure to the competition for a couple of reasons.  #1 - I didn't realize the clubs receive cash prizes for placing: 1st place- $200, 2nd place - $150, Third place - $75.  #2 - all of the students stand around the street staring at you as you judge their painting they had painstakingly worked on for the past three hours.  The four of us were surrounding by students with no way out.  If they didn't like the decision, they could have easily stoned us to death.

We had to make some tough decisions because there were many deserving paintings and now I know why Paula Abdul is insane.  Well, she might have been crazy prior to American Idol, but being on that show couldn't help.  Anyway, in the end, I believe we came to a good decision and awarded prizes to the appropriate clubs.  We even had a tie for 3rd place.  I would like to publicly apologize to the Viking Council for having to spend an extra $75 because we couldn't agree on 3rd place!