Not Bad!

Last week I competed in the Skills USA Competition. we had to do various tasks, like timing a magneto, riveting, safety wire, tube bending and composite structure fault finding. I ended up placing second in the state, which gives me free tuition for a semester.
Considering that most of the skills are things we had not studied yet, I think I did OK. As for finishing second, when we first started do the training for this, there were about 20 or so students from SLCC. Most were second year students who have done plenty of this work, and knew what they were doing. None of them ended up competing, probably because they will graduate in the summer, and the tuition is of no value to them. The school won't give them the cash. So in the end, only 4 1st year students competed. The other A&P school who should have come down and competed, was USU in Logan. They didn't send anyone down. So by coming second at the school, I came second at state (by default, but I am still claiming it). My purpose in competing wasn't to win the tuition, but to get better at those skills. I only found out about the tuition later on, and that is a real bonus. A lot of the other 1st year students now wish that they had taken the time to compete, but I kept telling them and they all had excuses why they didn't. Too bad.