I had the opportunity to correspond with Sue Roussie this past week.  Sue competed in and won the first SkillsUSA Geospatial Technology Competition in 2006.  She considered herself one of the guinea pigs as everything was new.  Looking back she saw the original questions on the preliminary qualification as a nightmare.  Some of the questions didn’t even have anything to do with GIS, so a lot of questions were thrown out.  When it came to the project, she only had 4 weeks to complete it.  Within this project, Sue used a lot of tools in ArcGIS and also used a GPS.  

Hear are a couple questions I asked with her responses:

1. Why did you want to participate?

I think that was my advisor’s idea.  I am not sure how it is helping right now as I am in the process of trying to obtain a GIS position and having that on my resume doesn’t seem to be increasing my changes of getting interviews (I haven’t had any in 6 months of applying).  Makes the university department look good though.

2. What challenges did you come up against?

The toughest challenge was the time frame and the fact that my computer died in the middle of it.

3. What did you learn from the experience?

What I learned from all of it is to never stay at a hotel full of high school students.  I didn’t get much sleep and had to call down to the desk a few times.  Kansas City was nice though.

I think all in all Sue had a great time out in Kansas City.  This is an interesting and open perspective for what to expect while competing in the competition.  I appreciate the time Sue took to share her experience.  You can learn more about Sue Roussie at http://www.rcstudio.net.