With provincial and national Skills Canada medals under his belt for automobile technology already, 20-year-old Corbin St. Jean is not letting his focus fade. The Plamondon resident is now preparing for next year’s multiple rounds of qualifiers on what he hopes begins his journey to the WorldSkills competition.
Results posted earlier this week announced St. Jean, an automotive service technology student at NAIT, had scooped third place at Skills Canada for the Automobile Technology category. This comes after he received gold in the provincial competition that took place in April, earning him a spot on this year’s Team Alberta.
For St. Jean, the experience felt fairly similar between the provincial and national competition, both of which were carried out at the NAIT auto shop after COVID-19 regulations caused the cancellation of the national event in Québec City. This cancellation forced qualifying students to participate from regional institutions. Participants in the automobile technology category completed a series of hands-on task as well as a virtual exam and diagnostic portion.
“Half of it was virtual,” said St. Jean who is accustomed to in-person diagnostics. “It didn't seem to work in my favor at all having it virtual. That really messed me up and is probably the main reason I didn't do better.”
Translating hands-on to a virtual context
A new virtual component called Electude, which is a e-learning platforms used by several technical schools, was added to the competition to standardize scoring for the diagnostic response questions.
“I think that's what threw me off the most was, there was no human understanding of what I was doing,” he said reflecting on his disappointment with his online diagnostic results. “The people I was competing with, there was about three or four of them, that use the program in school... I've never seen the program so that was a little learning curve.”
However, after the competition wrapped up, organizers told this year’s participants that the same online element is not expected to return for future events.
Although the virtual element left the 20-year-old feeling underwhelmed during Skills Canada, he feels confident he can perform even stronger next year. Sparking a fire in him to study and prepare more for next year’s competitions, hopefully leading him WorldSkills.
Slow beginnings
When St. Jean was initially approached to enter the event by his instructor and NAIT’s chair of the Auto Apprenticeship program Russ Belik, he was hesitant, initially second-guessing his his abilities to measure up to his peers, he says.
“I didn't think I was going to do great, so it just felt like a waste of time,” said St. Jean, initially thinking the back and forth between the family-run automotive business in Plamndon where he works, and regular skills training in Edmonton would be a challenge. “I've better things to do than to just waste a weekend competing not to go anywhere.”
However, concern quickly dissipated after his unexpected success on the regional, provincial and now national stage. With WorldSkills feeling more attainable than ever St. Jean is committing to ongoing coaching and knowledge building.
“I feel like I'm very “in it” with other competitors. It's not like there is other competitors that are much better... So that's why I'm self-motived, and tell myself that I can do better,” he says, admitting he will now have to begin studying for things that are not as necessary in real-world applications, but find themselves wedged into Skills competition exams.
Continuing to compete
St. Jean is now determining the logistics for long-distance training with his former instructor and coach Belik, who will also being assisting other NAIT students in Edmonton preparing for next year's competition.
Having already completing his journeyman credentials, St. Jean normally wouldn’t have been unable to compete again, if not for changes made as a result of postponed events due to COVID-19. St. Jean will be able to compete in Skills competitions until 2023 when he ages out of the bracket.
“They basically pushed back the [age eligibility] because they didn't want people to lose their opportunity,” said St. Jean explaining how the organizations is trying to allow individuals their shot at the competition after two years of disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The WorldSkills competition slated to happen this year in Shanghai has been postponed until October of 2022 when tradespersons who qualify will again get the chance to compete against international counterparts.
