Avoiding Premature Automation in My Judging

Last weekend I was supposed to do my first bout of scribing and that didn't happen, which was a bummer. I had spoken to the show organizer and signed up to scribe at two of their shows back in January, but when I checked in about scribing on the date that's literally been in my calendar for two months, I was told that the conversation that's literally in my phone had never happened.

To say I was bummed is an understatement, it's been a long tough two weeks and I was looking forward to getting half my scribing hours in over the weekend. And they wouldn't even let me sit (I need 10 sitting hours). So I'll be asking advice from the other people in the program about finding real scribe positions aaaand I'll be emailing everyone I've spoken to about scribing every week until the show dates. Lesson learned: be completely obnoxious.

It's fine okay

The reason why I was so eager to scribe or sit this weekend is because I'm literally driving up for Session D1 of Part 2 tomorrow! It would have been amazing to chat with a judge about their judging education the week before we start, but I'll have plenty of time to do that.

I've been studying hard and practicing judging... a little less hard. It's easy to quickly flip through flash cards while watching TV or taking a break at work or in between lessons, but the judge practicing requires a little more effort, so I need to put in more time there. Actually, as I write this post, I've got a bunch of youtube videos up and writing this is my break from judging.

It's definitely getting easier. I was having a conversation with a friend who was talking about getting a very low score from a judge, even though her stingy S judge trainer said that the test was very good. That judge gave her a 4 on gaits and I immediately was like "TWO OF HIS GAITS WERE PERVASIVELY IMPURE? YEAH RIGHT" and then realized how much I'd learned. I now have a really good idea of what each score for each of the collective marks look like (for the record, a four on gaits means that two of the gaits are pervasively impure, a five means one is pervasively impure, a six means all are pure but gaits are limited, or two gaits are good and one is pervasively impure, there's a whole system).

One of the ways I cope with stress is by buying plants apparently
this is not all of them (they did get spread out though)

But at the end of the day, it's just going to take a lot of time to get this knowledge so deep in my brain that I can sort of go on "autopilot" and that's okay. I mean, obviously I'm desperate to fully automate judging so that it's less fatiguing, but I have to resist that. Mary Wanless talks about premature automation in our riding as being a massive problem. We are taught to post as beginning riders when we have limited abilities and then we never change the way we post. I don't want to prematurely automate my judging because I want to be really good at that. I don't want to be the judge that automated too early to avoid fatigue and is just one of those judges that writes "5, off bit" or "7, smooth" on every single movement.

Because of this, I'm treating this almost like a physical skill at this point. I'm flexing my judge muscles until they get fatigued, then I take a break. At this point, I'm tired after judging two tests in a row at this point, my brain feels slow and foggy. So I'm taking a break right now and will go judge another two tests in a row and then take a break again. Perfect practice makes perfect, after all.

Me, currently, while judging

It's amazing to hear our top judges judge, I still vividly remember Mike Osinski judging for us as a demonstration. He has an amazing rhythm. He makes the test feel so much slower, while when I judge, I feel like I'm scrambling to keep up with the rider (pro tip, if you're going to go too slow or too fast in a test, go too slow! LOL honestly just do you, but if you ride in front of me any time soon, I appreciate a lazy horse). His comments are spot on every single time, they vary when there's a pervasive problem (one of the hardest things is to find 15+ different ways to tell a rider their horse has to be on the bit). His collective comments are very well thought out as well, they encourage the rider while also not skirting over the issues.

All of this seems to come so easy to him. It's part disillusioning and part inspiring.  At the end of the day, it's easy for him because he's worked hard and he's been judging for a long time now. I know I need to give myself some time to get to that point, not automate so quickly that I become a lazy judge.

Tomorrow I leave for the first session of Part 2 and I'm excited to exhaust myself learning. Luckily it's only two days for this first session!