MITES Competition Today.

Well today was the MITES automotive competition today. Link

Basically it's for any school in Michigan, you go and compete for scholarship money and stuff. First year students have 5 stations to complete and the second,third, and fourth year had 7. This was their largest show up yet, 91 students. They ranked the top 10 in each station. I ranked 9 on the written exam. Kid I was with ranked 8 on the same thing. Two second years I was with didn't rank. Our teacher just wanted us to go this year to see what it's like and what to expect/prepare for next year so we didn't prepare at all this year.

No for what kind of gets me, my teacher said he heard other teachers talking about how they had third and fourth year kids entered into the first year competition, obviously they dominated. I think it's great that I placed 9 in the entire state and all but the fact that kids who have been in autos 2-3 years longer than me come in and take the $1000 scholarship pisses me off. I wish I'd have known that ahead of time because I know I could have done better than if I'd known they were in it then I would have made sure to try my absolute hardest.

Ribbon.





P.S. I did walk out with a $500 scholarship though, it's not a ton but it's something. The one advanced kid who entered into the first year contest walked off with about $6000-$8000 in scholarship money. Thats why it pisses me off. The fact that a first year didn't get it because ass hat couldn't make in his own competition so he has to take it from us.

Oh, teacher was laughing as we left, he said the written part was where he least expected us to place. He couldn't get over that.

Well, theres no way to prove what class you're in so basically you just register to either the Quick Service or Auto Tech. So they just hop into quick service line and they're in. There were people from technical job training places witch is basically like a college, some of those guys had to be 20+ They really just need to enforce who is in each comp. 

Yes we also have a skills, but thats next year. Theres a lot of stuff for second year/advanced students.



Also, we called the guy and asked what we would be tested on, what he told us was nothing like what we had to do. And he was like the head guy. For the station we had to find stuff on a computer program, the comps would freeze up /reload the same page over. Theres some stuff that needs to be fixed.

choopie911 wrote: Yeah, that's ridiculous, and really discourages younger competitors. You should check out Skills. The skills Canada site is http://www.skillscanada.com/ and there should be an american equivelant, you should look into it. It's a worldwide thing, this year the international competition is in Calgary, Alberta. They have TONS of different skills/ trades you can train and compete in, like welding, plumbing, wiring, animation, film, graphic design, hairdressing, everything. The way it usually goes is you would train/ work/ learn at your local skills center. Then there are local competitions, by city. Winner of that moves up to bigger competitions (not sure the structure for everywhere, but you could compete against other cities winners) and you work your way up to qualify for your state/ provinces national team. Nationals move from city to city each year. Every 2 years it's a qualifying year for the worlds competition, so if you get gold at nationals, you join your countries team to compete in the world competition. Hopefully that was easy enough to follow, I'm sure you get the point. Either way, in my experiences it's nothing but positive, whether you place or not.

I have friends who do that.

It may not be the same division but our robotics team got #1 in the country two years ago.