SkillsUSA is an organization that connects all 13 of our school’s CTE pathways through leadership activities, community involvement, and career-based competitions. We had many Edison competitors such as Nabil Noor, Shifa Rabaja, Chalantica Roy, and Flora Shi.
The students participating went to cities first and others straight to states. Mr. Kalloo explained that it was based on a technicality.
“Okay, so some students go straight to state competition because the New York City competition does not hold that specific contest. So, for example, a competition that’s called Chapter Display, we don’t hold that here at Edison or at New York City level. So we qualify immediately to go to state,” Mr. Kalloo said.
Nabil, Shifa, and Chalantica went straight to state competitions while Flora was the only one of the four who had to compete in cities first. Flora Shi is a senior in Edison, participating for the first time in a SkillsUSA competition.
The competition Flora participated in went under drop interviews, which involved a mock job interview where they submitted a resume, filled out an application, and interviewed with two judges for a chosen position. That chosen position was something you got based on your shop class. This caused her some nerves.
“I felt pretty nervous since this is my first SkillsUSA competition. I did not know what to expect and what job to apply for since they did prefer you to apply for the job in your CTE level and my shop class is robotics, but I want to do healthcare in the future and all my extracurricular activities revolve around healthcare,” Flora Shi said.
She didn’t allow these nerves to prevent her from having fun and competing as she was able to get in the top 10, achieving the rank of 6th place for the interviews.
“I spent the three days pretty much enjoying myself, hanging out with my friends, taking lots of photos, eating big at midnight and making new friends. Personally I love the conference. It is my first skills competition and I’d rate it an 8.5 out of 10. I personally wish we got to go to a density mall like we were promised,” Shi said.
Since Flora is graduating she won’t be able to compete again, but Flora has some advice she would give to those going to the same competition.
“Practice common interview questions, be confident and show genuine interest in the role that you are applying for. Obviously be yourself, stay calm and let your personality and preparation shine through,” Flora Shi said.
Nabil Noor is also in the robotics shop class, but he is a Junior who competed in the engineering and design competition. He and his team had to make a prototype or a product, test it, and make a science fair style format presentation.
“We made a smart assistive back brace that alerts you to constantly maintain your posture,” Noor said.
The process following in the competition is to show and present their trifold presentation and they had to be able to show and explain their engineering notebook, our working invention, the code, and documentation of the entire process—from design to build to testing usability.
Nabil and his team won 2nd place in the robotics competition.
“The main reason why, well number one we wanted to go for first place like any other team, but the reason why we believe we didn’t get number one was because, well it was our first time and so we didn’t know, we couldn’t really gauge what the other teams were doing,” Noor said.
Another Edison student who competed and got 2nd place for entrepreneurship was Shifa Rabaja. The competition was entrepreneurship and she was quite nervous about it.
“It was a little bit stressful for me at least and also my other teammates because we genuinely didn’t know anything about, like, entrepreneurship as, like, in depth, as in, like, the logistics and the financial part, especially me because, like, I had to do the financial part and it was, like, a lot of numbers and financial vocabulary that I had to learn,” Rabaja said.
She was nervous as she didn’t even know what a break-point was and had to do a lot of extensive research to make sure that she did well in the competition. She was glad she got 2nd place as she didn’t feel like she and her team were ready for nationals but she was still proud.
“When we met the judges they were really nice and we got to, like, we got to present really well and I think we did really well. I’m proud of my team,” Rabaja said.
Chalantica Roy went to a Skills USA competition in their sophomore year and returned for their junior year but for a different competition, Roy is going for outstanding chapter. Her competition included creating a book highlighting every event hosted by Edison SkillsUSA, including service events, community service, and trips.
“I think something that I really learned was really not being afraid to come out of your shell,” Roy said.
This helped her as her competition was a speaking competition where she had to present her book to a presentation she made that she also presented to the judges. This year she placed 3rd place. It doesn’t seem like she will stop competing anytime soon.
“There was a part of me that wished I got gold but you know it was an amazing experience and the more I compete the more I get to learn and I am forever grateful for that opportunity,” Roy said.
The Skills USA competition allowed these four students to show their strengths and compete but they were not the only ones there were many Edison kids that competed and won something. We found that the demographic of seven Edison alumni got bronze, seven Edison alumni got silver, and fifteen Edison alumni got gold.
