Skills USA State Competition

A few weeks ago, I went to Skills USA.  I was actually the only girl going from our school.  Two guys were going in Computer Programming, like I was, one was going for Computer maintenance, three for electronics, and one for 3-D drafting, I think.  We left at 9am on Thursday.  I rode in a van with two of the three guys I actually knew and the professor who was the only other female going (she probably had to go because I was going).  One of the guys was doing programming and had gone a couple years before, so I wracked his brain a little bit to get an idea of what exactly it would be like.

When we arrived, we picked up the schedule and checked into our hotel.  It was very nice, and we each had a room to ourselves, which was even better.  We all had meetings starting at 5:30 that evening, so we went to Cheesecake factory to grab lunch/dinner (since by that time, it was already 3:00 in the afternoon).  We went dressed in our Skills USA uniforms, which consisted of a white polo with the Skills USA logo and black dress pants.  I looked slightly ridiculous because my polo was too big--they didn't have any smalls, I think because they had never sent any girls before.  I took a picture, but it was very blurry.  Turns out, eating lunch in white polo shirts is not the smartest idea.  Several of the guys got food on their shirts, but luckily the spots weren't too big.

I think the thing we spent the most time doing at Skills USA was waiting.  We got to the meeting about 45 minutes early.  Then, our meeting only took 15 minutes to half an hour because all we really had to do was get our name tags and then ask any questions we wanted to.  The rules and the professor back at SUU who had encouraged us to go made it seem like the competition would be very strict, but we were working with programmers, who tend to be pretty relaxed people.  They told us we could use the internet and pretty much any resources we wanted as long as we didn't copy and paste code.

After the meeting, we had to wait for all the other guys, some of whom had their competition that night.  I spent the time with the two programming guys, wandering around campus.  One of them had attended the school before coming to SUU, so he kind of showed us around.  I guess I should have taken some pictures then, so I would have some to post here.

I met up with my in-laws about 7:15 and went back with them to their new house.  They've gotten a lot of things unpacked and in place.  It was kind of funny to see all of the things that had been in their old house in the new space.

That evening I showered and tried to get everything as ready as possible for the next day because we were leaving the hotel at 6:30am and wouldn't be back.  I had a hard time getting to sleep, though, partially because I had no white noise--the air conditioner wouldn't stay on.  The other reason I had a hard time getting to sleep was because I had tried to call Peter and he didn't answer.  I tried to go to sleep without worrying about him, but I really couldn't sleep.  I finally called him again at like midnight, and he answered this time.  Turns out he had fallen asleep because he had nothing to do without me around ;)  We chatted for a bit, and after that, I was able to get to sleep.

We left just after 6:30 that morning, and once again, we got to wait around for an hour before our competition actually began.  The challenge for our competition was basically to program a hierarchical database, which might not be incredibly difficult, but is difficult to do in 5 hours or less.  They told us from the beginning, they didn't expect us to finish.  There were only four of us in the collegiate group (Skills USA has a lot of high school participants), and three of us were from SUU, so at least two of us were bound to place.  The guy from the other school left really early, claiming to be finished.  One of the guys from our group had to leave an hour early so he could get back for a ballroom competition, and the last two of us stayed the whole time.  We ended up chatting with the judge who had come up with our challenge after the competition was over, which was kind of cool.  He gave us two pieces of interview advice: 1) start with a fart joke to break the ice (I'm not sure how well that would work for a girl, though...)  and 2) unless you walk away laughing, you probably don't have the job.

After that, we got to, you guessed it, wait.  The awards ceremony wasn't until 6:00 that evening, and we were done by 2:30.  We sort of vegged it on the couch in the student center for a while, then wandered off to find some food.  We ended up eating Wendy's and got back just in time to head over to the award ceremony, which did not start right at 6:00.

The awards were not quite what I was expecting.  I was expecting something very formal and official, and this had elements of that, but there were so many people and so many different competitions, that they really couldn't be completely formal.  They were also not very organized or smooth as they presented the awards, with a lot of pauses and breaks.  They almost forgot to announce the winners for about four of the competitions, two of which guys from our school had competed in.  SUU swept two of the competitions.  I got second in computer programming and the two other SUU students got first and third.  We were told that our code was actually better than that of the winner the previous year, which was almost better to me than winning, since three out of the four of us had to place.  Because the guy who got first might not be able to go, I might get to go to nationals this summer, which would be a pretty big honor.

Two programming winners!

After the awards ceremony, we had to drive home, and we didn't get back until nearly two in the morning.  I actually had a pretty cool conversation with the guy in my van.  He's from Utah, but his mom isn't a Latter-day Saint, so neither is he [if you don't know what this means, click on the "I Believe" button at the top of the right column in this blog : ) ].  We didn't really talk religion, but it was interesting to learn about his family and background and to tell him about mine.

*****Update 4/21/2014******

Yesterday at church, one of the sisters asked me about being in Skills USA.  She told me she had read about it on SUU's website, so I looked today, and sure enough, I found it!.  Pretty cool.  Click the link here to see the article.