One School, One Country
Hello Everyone!
I am still in Calgary and competition hasn't started yet. Today we went to visit two elementary schools to introduce ourselves and what we do. At one of the schools we were each assigned four little kids to be our "tour guides." We went to different classrooms and each student took turns to introduce me. It was very nice. I had explained to them what printing was and when the other students had questions about what printing is my tour guides would proudly explain.
We have the opening ceremony tonight. Tomorrow is my first day of competition and I am going to be doing an exercise on the SHOTS simulator. I am also doing some cutting! The SHOTS simulator exercise is only worth 2 points and they are judging us on just our ability to solve the problem. The cutting is only worth half of a point because it isn't an every day task that a press operator has to do cutting. For cutting, all I have to do is tell them what first cut I would make.
The following day I have some ink mixing to do, a digital print job, and a SHOTS simulator exercise. The ink mixing will be done in Grams, not Pounds. The digital job is worth only half a point and all we have to do is make sure we get there on time to get the half of a point.
On the third day, I have to do my final SHOTS exercise in the morning and then in the afternoon I will have my press run. I named the press "Jerry" after my trainer at Gilson Graphics. The SHOTS exercise is going to be hard, according to the judges. I hope I can figure out the problems quickly. I hope the printer gods are with me during my press run. There are a lot of talented press operators at the competition. Some have had years of experience running a Heidelberg SM-52. I hope the press runs like it has been running at Gilson.
The fourth and final day is the day that I measure my spot color with a spectrophotometer. After the competition we have our closing ceremony and that is when they announce the winners. I hope I can go on stage and represent all of the printers at Ferris State University!
-Amela Mujkic
P.S. Pictured above is Royce Richards from New Zealand. You can see me in the picture there behind him. Royce is one of the few competitors in Offset Printing that will talk to me. The rest pretend they don't speak english.
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