Saskatchewan Polytechnic graduate Leah Lucyshyn was awarded a medallion of excellence in a global skills competition.
“These skills competitions are an Olympic style competition for high school and post secondary students in skilled trades and technology sectors,” Lucyshyn told CTV News.
“It was definitely an honor to represent Canada, and to be able to go on an international conference competition like that table to represent Canada,” she said. “It feels great to be able to have that to represent all the years of sacrifice hard work competitions practice I've put in.”
The WorldSkills competition was held in Switzerland from October 12-15. Lucyshyn said this was her last chance to compete as it’s only for those under 22-years-old.
She competed in the graphic design category, which involved four days of competition where participants were given projects to complete.
“Usually each day is a little bit different. Like you might have one day, that's like a branding day, an editorial day, something like a magazine packaging day,” she explained.
“So every day you get something different, and you have six hours to do it. And in the competitions are based 50 per cent off technical, 50 per cent off creativity.”
Lucyshyn is no stranger to competitions in her field. She has won gold in the graphic design technology competition and the RBC Best of Region award for Saskatchewan, according to the Sask. Polytech website.
She also competed in the provincial competition in 2019.
Lucyshyn said she took time to prepare before the WorldSkills competition.
“We'll use old test projects from previous WorldSkills years and just going through those getting used to them doing them in the timeframe for taking everything out,” she said.
It was tough as she had a full-time graphic design job on top of training.
“In your day job you're designing all day long and then training in the evening. That is a lot because the graphic design industry and training are two separate things. I mean, a lot of the time, the standards and expectations at Worlds are higher than what the industry would expect of us, like, for example, one of our competition days, we had to do a 16-page, editorial or magazine in six hours, whereas in the industry, you probably get 12 to 18 hours to do that. So the standards are quite different.”
Despite the extra work involved, Lucyshyn says it’s worth it.
“Get involved with that while you can because you will not have many opportunities in your life to be surrounded by people with that much knowledge about your industry.”
She is the third Polytech grad to win a medallion of excellence, the school’s website said. Previous graduates were Kyla Henry in 2017 and Roxanne (Kanak) Symon in 2015.
