Judge not lest ye be judged

I wound up volunteering as a judge for drama regionals today. If there is a volunteer position I am less suited for, I would like to know what it is. I would never have signed up in the first place, but Annabelle's drama coach needed to round up a certain number of judges for the competition, and he is a great guy. I really appreciate how much fun Annabelle has with the drama club, so how could I say no?

If drama regionals were American Idol, I would be Paula Abdul except without the good drugs. I can just see me flapping my hands together in a clappy sort of way and making sappy, encouraging comments.

Judging was excruciating for me! I live in a rainbow-colored world where everybody is a winner, but beyond that, all the acts that came before me were just so good that it was horrible to have to rank them.

The best part about being a judge was that when regionals ended in disappointment for Annabelle, I was able to tell her a little bit about the judge's side of things. I told her that for one thing, I really felt inadequately trained for such an important job. I also told her that I was stunned to see some of the acts that I ranked as being the highest scoring did NOT wind up going on to the state level. (Each act got performed for 2 different judges, and the scores were averaged.)

Apparently there is some sort of formula for number of judges that a school is required to provide. It has something to do with the number of contestants, and then if you don't have enough volunteers, your entry fees get raised. I have gone on record that next year I will happily ransom myself out of the judging business!