On Contests

Something interesting happened to me at CDYC. I had the opportunity to serve as a judge for the junior high art contest. I have been in several such competitions, but this was my first time ever evaluating the work of others. Things went well, I suppose. I was neither an overly generous nor an overly stingy judge. Most of the work I evaluated fell in the median range.
However, I am one of those wierd people who cannot help overcomplicating anything just by thinking about it. There I was, critiquing the efforts of fragile junior high students in a room with two middle-aged women and Jordan (he was judging photography) and suddenly I was contemplating the differences between judging and judgement, and the purpose of competition. Who does that?
Regardless of whether these thoughts were warranted or not, they came. It was difficult to be a judge when I had been an entrant so many times and often been dissatisfied with judge responses. What little junior higher was I going to crush with my criticism? I tried to remain as positive as possible with my comments, but sometimes it was a challenge. Some of the work, simply put, was not very good. I try not to be snobbish about art, but it is one of my things, something I really love and an area where I am gifted, which makes it even harder to respect the efforts of others.
My job was to judge these works, on various criteria. I have somewhat random conectivity of thought at times, and suddenly I was thinking about Jesus' warning not to judge. Of course, this is a slightly different form of judging, but how many of those students did I judge in my mind, especially when I would read the purpose they gave behind their work and guffaw at their shallow or even incompetent attempts at finding purpose in their piece. Where does critiquing become criticism, and when does bemusement become self-aggrandizement? I was careful to make sure my comments to the entrants were positive and gentle; I do not think any of them will find cockiness or belittlement in my responses, but what is going on in the judge's mind?
I will be serving as a judge for group drama for the senior high tomorrow, and probably evaluate the senior high art as well. It is a somewhat scary prospect, not only because the number of entries will be greatly increased, but also because I now know what judging is like. It requires a bit of personal and emotional detachment, but also requires maintaining compassion for the person who will be reading your critique. I do not want to have to be cold to be a judge, but I also do not want to deal with the emotional strain of looking for faults in the work of others I have a whole new level of respect for the challenge involved in judging competitions, and a new realization of the claws of pride still clinging to me. I pray that I may dislodge them.