Gold medals to Tampere!

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Students at the Tampere Vocational College Tredu have now proven they are All Bright: this spring they excelled at the Finnish vocational skills competition. Tampere - All Bright! Magazine visited the Tredu Business and Administration Unit to find out what the gold medallists were up to.

"The team spirit at the competition was excellent, particularly the way that the Tredu students spurred each other on."

This is what students Henriikka Riihitupa, Satu Piippo, Iida Langenoja and Jasmine Lehtinen had to say. Each of them brought home a gold medal from the Taitaja 2014 Finnish Vocational Skills Competition held in Lahti. The success did not come easy. The students' skills and knowledge of their field of study was tested for three consecutive days in various different competition tasks.

– Vocational skills were demonstrated in the competition by doing work in our own field; for example, I sold nutritional supplements and bikes to customers and one of my tasks also included b-to-b sales, says Riihitupa.

– The tasks were judged and graded separately on each competition day, so the suspense remained until the very end, says Piippo.

Competition entrants did not have much free time to spend in Lahti, but the large-scale event had plenty of attractions.

– I had no idea that so many different fields of study existed. Tredu alone has a huge variety, not to mention the entire country, says Lehtinen.

– You could clearly see what talented people vocational students are, adds Langenoja.
 

The gold medallists are all third-year students, which means that their studies at Tredu are drawing to a close. Some of them are planning to continue their studies, and for them the spring semester has been busy as they have been preparing themselves for entrance examinations while studying. All four medallists also work while studying, to add to their work experience and finances. Their plans for the summer include either more work or taking it easy and also waiting anxiously for the entrance exam results.

Their time in Tredu will not only leave them with a vocational degree to list in their CVs, but also a gold medal in vocational skills. All the medallists agree that the achievement is definitely worth mentioning and will also be of interest to future employers.

All in all, students from Tredu won ten gold medals in the Finnish vocational skills competition. Five gold medals, five bronze medals and two commendations made Tredu one of the most successful institutions in Finland. Of the winners interviewed for this article, Henriikka Riihitupa competed in customer service and sales, Satu Piippo in decoration and Jasmine Lehtinen and Iida Langenoja as a team in business administration.

The students themselves felt that the secret of their success in the competition was the fact that their performance was evenly good in all fields of the competition. And what made this possible? The students do not hesitate with their answer: "The excellent education provided by Tredu. Good teachers. Our own motivation. Oh, and school meals are really good, too!"

 

Translation: Lingoneer