Whose fault is it, really?
Maybe because it's the end of the calendar year and we're stressed about tangibly progressing; maybe it's simply because the fall events have been stacking up recently... but I've been hearing a lot of frustration from friends and students (and random people online) regarding their competition draws. "I just didn't like any of my partners, really." "My first draw was good, my second one was terrible though. I hope the judges weren't looking at me for that one." "My finals partner was awful and I just hope people don't think I'm a bad dancer after watching that. That wasn't my fault!" Then there's my friend who tells me that their (romantic) partner seems to get frustrated dancing with them when they can't do everything that they want to happen in the dance/make it their ideal. There's the instructor who blames having "all bad draws in prelims" when she doesn't make finals. And so on, and so