Everyone who enters the Kingdom Arts and Sciences competition has their own reasons ranging from wanting to get projects done, being asked by their master or mistress, to merely wanting feedback on their current work. My personal reasons were the looming possibility of moving out of kingdom for graduate school. If I wanted to enter kingdom A&S it had to be that year or I might never get the chance. Beyond that, I wanted to enter to show people what I had been up to for the last several years since I had been keeping a fairly low profile, and I also wanted an excuse to do / finish a bunch of projects that might not otherwise be completed. As you can see, my reasons were reasons to enter rather than to win. I really had no idea if I had a chance at winning. My main goal was getting projects complete enough to bring them to the competition.
Being Champion
Before entering the competition, I asked myself if I would be willing to stand through endless hours of court and travel a lot and decided that, yes, I was willing to do that and that I wanted the chance to encourage and aid the Arts and Sciences in An Tir. Be sure you want to deal with being the Arts and Sciences Champion before you enter, even if you don't think you will have to deal with it. At the most stressful points of my championship, I ended up borrowing money from my mother to fly to events, not being able to display arts stuff because I was squeezing myself into other people's cars for seven hour drives, standing through endless courts when it was boiling without anyone to bring me water, and having personal tragedy strike me when I was out of town at an event. I also found that I spent so much time doing official stuff that I had barely any time to devote to working on my own projects. Despite all of that, I am glad I competed and would do the same thing again since there were a lot of really good times to balance the not so good. You have to decide if you are willing to go through both.
Do You Want To Enter?
The biggest piece of advice I have to offer is, if you really want to enter, enter. Don't let people discourage you; don't let the undone-ness of your projects put you down. Remember, you can always enter again next year, too, after you have had the experience and feedback of competing once. I did just about everything I was not supposed to do: I decided to enter the night before Twelfth Night with no completed projects; I was trying to finish projects desperately the week before the event and ended up entering with things I considered to be incomplete; I finished my documentation at midnight before the event then drove the four hours to get to there' I wasn't prepared and ended up making labels for things at the event, had to go out and make extra copies on Saturday night, stayed up way too late celebrating my birthday, and on top of it all. I had to drag along my homework because it was two weeks before finals. The real thing is that if you want to go and compete, go do it, you will be proud of yourself for getting there even if it is a horrible idea. Not everyone will love what you do. Not all of your feedback will be positive, despite all attempts by the event staff to make judging a good experience. But if you are there because YOU want to be there it will be a valuable and hopefully good experience.So You Are Entering, Now What?
Next piece of advice, once you have decided to enter, read EVERYTHING on the A&S website relating to the competition. Read all of the entrants handbook. Read the judges handbook, too, and the judging sheets so you know exactly what they are looking for and try to address those issues in your presentation, display and documentation. Read everything each of the past A&S champions has written, because it is all different. Read all the example documentation you can find and make your decisions about how your want to do documentation. Also ask people for advice. I had never even been to a Kingdom A&S before entering so I would have been lost without the advice of people who had attended, judged, and competed.
What to Enter
If you are like me and do a ton of things and have a hard time deciding what to enter, my advice is to enter what you love. That love and joy will shine out when you talk about your project. If you love everything you do, enter what you are best at. If you are good at everything, enter the project that is the easiest to document and that uses the most medieval techniques and tools. Also, if trying to decide how many items to enter, remember that four projects that are well done are worth more than five that are just ok.
Display and Extras
When you display your entries, consider including previous attempts, failed attempts, materials, pictures of you working on the items and pictures of the items in the process of being made. All of these are valuable teaching tools and show the work you have done, how far you have come and how much you have accomplished. Also, label things so that if you are not at your display, people can look and learn about your art. A more educated populace means more appreciation for your art and hopefully more interested people and more knowledgeable judges in the future.
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