Another Competition

 Today is the day I leave for Cottonwood, Arizona, for the SkillsUSA Regional Welding competition at Mingus High School. So far, I’ve only prepared my tool box and resume, I have not yet packed at all but eventually I will. Throughout the week at the welding shop, we were given pieces of metals and a blueprint that we to assemble according to the blue print within 30 minutes. 30 minutes sounds like a lot of time but when you have to quickly glance at the blue print, place the right piece of metal where it belongs, and correctly weld where and how the blue print says, the 30 minutes feel like 5. As we did our projects there has been little mistakes that would have cost me lots of points in the competition, 50 percent of our points come from our assembly and the other 50 percent come from how well are welds are. Inside the welding competition, we weld in three main processes in welding: mig, tig, and stick, along with welding we cut the metal in oxy-fuel and plasma, as well as a mock interview, and written tests that are related to welding in between everyone of these categories. We receive points in everything we do and in the end whoever has the most points wins.

Although this is just the regional competition, between the three NAVIT (vocational institute program) welding shops: Holbrook, St. Johns, and Show Low, to qualify for state we have to finish as one of the top six out of the three shops. There’s normally about 80 welders that compete in the regional that are just from the northern part of Arizona, but at state it’s everyone in Arizona. Last year I was fortunate enough to place 11^th in the entire regional competition and advance to state because I place 4^th inside the NAVIT shops. I plan to do my best at Saturday’s competition. It starts at 6am and does not end until 3pm, so I know already it’s going to be a long day.

I enjoy competing with welding, for me; it’s like putting two of my favorite things together. Even though I probably would have lost if my projects from this week were for this competition, I see it as I have already made mistakes and learned from them. Right now I’m nervous about welding, but I’m more confident than I was last year and looking forward to Saturday. I’m just doing what I love, surrounded by people who share the same interest in welding as me. I will do by best in this competition and most importantly have fun welding and hope it’s good enough to qualify for state in March.