Springhill – After two years of education they don’t just have the skills needed to build a trophy case, they have the hardware, too.
Nova Scotia Community College Cumberland Campus Springhill students Nick George and Thomas Adshade, both second-year carpentry students approaching graduation, attended Skills Canada’s Nova Scotia competition in Halifax netting themselves second and third place honours, respectively.
With a limited number of registration vacancies, George and Adshade qualified to represent the Cumberland Campus and entering the contest offered a real-world opportunity to take what they’ve learned, strive for excellence, and do it on the clock.
“It was very fast,” Adshade, who hails from Oxford, said.
“They don’t give you much time for what you got to do,” George, who calls Amherst home, said. “There’s not much time for looking up and figuring out what’s going on. You got to put your head down and get to it.”
“We went in and they gave us our plans and then we started building at 8:30 a.m. We got to look them over right quick and then we had to go out and start building,” Adshade said. “They had a little spot gated off, so we only had enough room to work with.”
The task at hand was a four-by-six children’s play shed. Between making their cuts straight and true, Adshade and George say they dug deep into one of the things at the forefront of their carpentry program during both their first and second year of instruction.
“Safety was the main thing,” Adshade said. “You could lose points, like if you took your safety glasses off for even a second you would get docked points or if you went outside of your gated area when moving lumber, you would lose points.”
“I focused a lot on the safety because I knew it was a big part of the points, so I wanted to make sure I was getting them all,” George said.
A steady flow of observers during the day kept the two on their toes, but at the end of the day it was a fun challenge. Now the two will graduate from their program with an opportunity to say they have standout skills and a confidence boost for when they enter the work force.
“I’m in the apprentice program, so I would like to get my Red Seal,” George said. “I want to go all the way with carpentry. I enjoy it.”
“I want to go Red Seal with it. I kind of like the finish-work side of [carpentry] but I also like framing, and pretty much everything,” Adshade said.
With family so close, both say they wold enjoy finding work locally after graduation.
According to Skills Canada Nova Scotia’s website, the organization an interactive experience to over 2,000 students annually. Affiliated nationally with Skills Canada and World Skills International, their signature event is the annual Nova Scotia Skills Competition. To learn more visit www.skillsns.ca.
