From February 20-22, there were overlapping competitions for SkillsUSA. One of them was culinarys’ baking competition. One of the many Participants was Samantha Kenney, a junior here at wylie high school. It was her first ever SkillsUSA competition, she was given the opportunity to participate and she took it, she is still unsure whether it’s her dream career but she does know she will pursue it whether as a fun hobby or a job.
“I would definitely rate it like a nine out of ten. Obviously I didn’t win, so that takes off points. But overall, aside from that, it was very fun. It was a very good experience. I definitely recommend it (the competition),” Samantha Kenney (11) said. “My expectations for the baking competition were… I expected it to be a lot more stressful. The reality of it was, everybody was kind of doing their own thing, and there [were] only like, really 8 or 9 of us in the room.”
After her first competition, although she did not place in this year’s baking competition, she is determined to enter next year’s competition and place. With the advice and guidance she received from the judges at the competition and her chef from here, she plans on putting in more effort than before and continues to work on her cooking techniques and skills.
“The advice that they gave me was to make a timeline, like I just said, they were basically telling me, like, if you can’t be with your advisor, make a timeline. That’ll help you out a lot with your time management. And that’s the main thing I got. and that I think was very helpful,” Kenney said.
It also helped Samantha fathom a better understanding of independence, especially in time crunch situations and when she needs to work on her own without a team to depend on.
“It helped me out a lot because the judges definitely dictate afterwards that they give you, you know, what you needed to what they thought you could have done better and definitely like advice that they can give you overall and everything,” Kenney said.
The stress came upon from the very beginning of the bake off, from the prepping and sanitation to the finalization and presentation.
“Throughout the baking, they judged basically like our sanitation, our technique, all those different stuff, like how we were performing everything and if we did stuff differently than others… technique-wise. And then afterwards they base off (the judging) if things were cooked all the way through to presentation time,” Kenney said.
As a hopeful student who craves for her future, she refuses to give up and leave things as they are. Her determination to keep trying again, only after it being her first time, is a highlight in her persona.
“I would definitely say, you know, put your best foot forward. In everything, make sure you’re having fun. Don’t stress yourself out about it. You know, obviously you want to do your best, but, you know, make sure you’re having fun with it as well because if you’re not having fun, then… there’s no point in doing it,” Kenney said.