This last weekend, I participated in the state level competition for SkillsUSA. It's basically a nation-wide technical skills competition. They have a school contest, then a state contest, then a national level contest in Kansas City, MO.
The school level consisted of me receiving and replying to an email from Wiz, my professor. He received a last-minute reminder from SkillsUSA to make sure to get his school winner names in by noon that day! Well, considering he had no idea he was supposed to hold a school contest until they emailed him, he basically just said that the first six people to email him were in! Well, I was second, so I got silver.
Background done, on to the real story!
So, we got to SLCC at 8 AM on Friday. The first hour was spent taking an actual knowledge-based test, which accounted for about 10% of our final score. As soon as the text was taken, it was on to the actual competition. We were only up against two other teams from our school. Apparently no other post-secondary school in Utah cares enough to challenge their Audio students, so UVU was the only school there.
I'll be honest, I was way excited about this competition. Our goal was to create a 1-2 minute "Radio Documentary" about SkillsUSA. This was different from what I was expecting. Normally you create a 30-60 second "spot" or actual radio Ad. the difference was that we had to walk around SLCC campus and actually interview students, parents, advisors, and the like. We compiled it all into a 1:30 slot and threw it together.
Now, considering we only had 5-6 hours to complete it, I figure we did okay. We felt like we were working left-handed the entire time as we were using ProTools to edit our mix. Neither of us are really great at ProTools and it took us longer than it would have, had we been using Vegas or some other program. As it was, we forgot to put some volume automation in one part of it, so it was really quiet and boring for about 20 seconds. This is a huge problem when the judges are basing half your scored off of "levels" and "creativity". This was only made more problematic when the CD would not burn and we ended up submitting it a couple of minutes after the "bell". We got docked points for being late, but we also got docked points for it not being exactly 1:30. We were a second short because iTunes sucks at burning. This was our only option and we were already late, so we just did it and hoped for the best.
Well, the best was us getting third place. I will be honest in saying I think we deserved less than that. I felt horrible about our mix and was embarrassed to even hear it play for the judges. That being said, if I had 10 minutes, I could go in and fix everything and, if the contest were to be re-judged, produce a gold-winning spot. I am almost certain that if we had 10 more minutes to work, we would have won gold. That's not being cocky, I'm just saying that that's how close the competition was.
Of course, I am more than genuinely happy for the team that won. I'm so excited for them and they totally deserved it. The national competition is in June in Kansas City. It's all paid for by the school, so it's a win-win.
It was worth it though. I had a great time with my audio nerd friends and Wiz is always a blast. I also learned what it will take to blow them all out of the water next year!
I ended the weekend with an invitation to the FUN. concert in Salt Lake Saturday night. It was... well, fun. (Har har...)
Needless to say, this has been a draining week. I was so tired from it all that I slept through half of General Conference, went to bed at 8PM on Sunday night, and was still dog tired when I woke up at 6:45 this morning.
I guess it's a good thing school will be out in a couple weeks. I wonder if I can make it until then...
