Call for Writers - IHSA Math

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

Noah Prince and I are looking for math writers for the 2021-2022 IHSA State Series. Specifically, we're looking for writers with a fair amount of writing experience who are interested in mastering & improving the art of writing math questions.

Some background info, if you're unfamiliar with IHSA Scholastic Bowl: The IHSA State Tournament has 12.5 packets, played in three stages (Regionals, Sectionals, State) at three different difficulty levels. Each packet is 24/24, with 4/4 of that being math. (The categories of the other 20/20 are pretty comparable to what you might see at your friendly Saturday housewrite or your friendly PACE NSC.)

This makes for a total writing job of 50/50 math, at difficulty levels varying from "easier than SCOP Novice" to "nationals." It's quite a task! The bulk of this writing has been done by some combination of Noah and/or me since 2016. We want some fresh questions in this category. More than that: we want to work with you, the next generation of math writers. We want your future tournaments to have better math questions as a result of the work you do on this tournament.

So, we're looking for people who have previously written questions for published tournaments & are up to the challenge of writing for a set that basically quintuples the amount of math a "normal" tournament will use. I say "people," plural - you will not write 100 questions yourself. We'd love 3-5 writers to join us. Noah and I will edit your questions in a collaborative process - beyond simple repeat-checking against the other questions in the set, there'll be a bit more tinkering on these questions than you're used to seeing in a writing project, because this tournament has some pretty strict accessibility concerns, and because we want to mentor you.

Pay: The IHSA doesn't pay particularly well -- the budget is $4 per question -- so unfortunately, this is not a good financial offer. I hate the idea of paying in exposure or mentorship, but that's what we've got.

Timeline: We'll be writing this set between now and winter break; if we have three math writers, then to meet our deadlines, you'll want to have writing time for roughly 3 questions per week in September, October, and November.

If you're interested, please email me with a brief history of your writing experience at [email protected]. I'll also answer any questions you have. I'd like to have the writers finalized by September 1st.

Thank you for reading!

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

I've received a couple responses and will write back later this week (thank you for your patience!), but if you'd still like to get in on this, there's still time. Thanks!