Before I joined FFA ( Future Farmers of America) I was a very quiet and not very talkative person so one of my friends showed me what it was and what you do like agriculture stuff But I was sort of interested so decided to join. I was just about to enter when covid hit and our school was in a hybrid mode which meant it would be difficult to join because all of the covid stuff made it hard to do school work and FFA didn't have to sign up during that time. 

So the next year came along and I joined on the third day of school and chose my CDE (Career Development Event) which is fish and wildlife which my teammates and I call ‘fish and dubs’. I was feeling kind of nervous thinking that I don't know what FFA is and felt like I didn't belong.  When I met my team they were all just a bunch of seniors and I was the only freshy out of all of them.  So I took a deep breath and walked in thinking that this couldn't be as bad as I thought because I know half of the animals that live in Minnesota.

It turned out that  I was about fifty percent right on them and when I got told that we got an invitation to Lanesboro in one week, I was freaking out because I just joined and I didn’t even know the other half of the animals. I didn’t even know the written exam so I studied and studied until it came to the day when we left to go to Lanesboro mn. 

When we got there I felt absolutely terrified because I didn't have my teammates by me to help me because we all got split up. So I manned up and did the written exam first because it is better to do the harder one first, and then the identification, and I felt that I did not do so well. So right as we got to the restaurant our AG(agriculture) advisor Mr. Pliscot said that I got sixth place in individual and our team got second place! And this was only my first year and I felt happier than ever and that is what motivated me to go to state. 

Now months have gone by and I have really started to love FFA.  In FFA there are recreational activities and I loved doing them like there is a highway clear up where I found a never used fishing lure. In December, we had a bunch of FFA officers come to tell us what you can do to become a good FFA officer and I took their advice and joined. One of them is an LDE (Leadership Development Event) which is called BIG (Best Informed Green hand) which taught me more about what FFA is and what it means. So I had one of the best teams that I could have and it was really fun, so we practiced every Monday and Friday because our first Regional Competition was in two months. Finally, I was feeling ready, and later on, the day when we got the results back my team got first place and our second team got the second place so now in a

couple of months we will be going to state but before we do that let me tell you some fun stuff that we did before State. 

We had a snow tubing day and we went to a snow tubing place called The Bad Land in Eden Prairie which was the best because it had giant slopes and a giant ramp to go off of and I had a lot of fun with my friends. Afterward, we stopped at a Calver and I went around asking people for their sticky notes I placed them around my head and they added up to 100 sticky notes on me. But also our fish and wildlife team had to go to Regional that was 3 months ago and our team placed first and I placed in the top 10 which was hard because the written exam had questions which asked things like: What is the alternative nickname for a pike? and the answer was big papi and that was the funniest and stupidest question ever. So on our way back, we had to stop at a hardware store because our AG advisor had to get some stuff for his welding class and one of my teammates knocked over one of the ax displays and we were lucky that we didn't get kicked out.

So now it has been 2 months and I was ready and packed to go to the State Competitions. Right as we got to the U of M (University of Minnesota), we had to sit and watch the State FFA officer introduce themselves. After that, they did the talent show which was cool but before we took our test I could not stop thinking about that wow I made it to State and I feel that if I keep up the good work I can go farther than ever before. So when I got my head cleared and I took my BIG test which was a challenge because one of the questions asked: What is the MN FFA State president? I was stumped. I was stuck on that one problem for 10 mins and I finally went with my gut and chose it, but I really didn't feel good about it so I moved on.

 Then came the second day of State, that is when I had to do my fish and wildlife CDE but we went to the MN State Fair a little bit early (this is where the competition was being held) so we walked around the Coliseum looking at a bunch of vendors. I was interested in this one that was about the DNR (department of natural resources) and how to become a DNR officer. We were walking around for about an hour until our AG advisor got us an interview with a guy that has a radio station. I had interviewed him before and we talked about tractors for a half hour and I had had a great time with him. But at State, we talked to him about how the strategy is to make it in the top five. And right as we got done with the interview our team split up and Matthew and I did the written exam. We had to do it in the cold, it was about 39 degrees outside in the poultry barn, and I was freezing my butt off because we were only wearing our FFA official dress clothes which are not warm. 

This got worse as when everybody finished we also had to sit in the cold for 30 minutes and then we had to stand for another 25 minutes for the bus to come. So now we were on our way to do the identification test, which did not go so well because right as I got to number 20 and it had a

weird colored raccoon that had a tanish color fur and its tail was the color of a red fox so I  doubted myself and went with the answer of a red fox.  They had a snake skull that was in a glass box and I went with a western fox snake but it was not a western fox snake it was a timber rattlesnake. So after I was done I felt good about my answers and thought that I did well, and later on we got a notification that we made it in the top five for BIG and fish and wild and so we got fourth place in both. It was hard and challenging but I never gave up and just kept trying because if I didn’t join FFA I would not be living the dream, I would not be this talkative until this very day, and would have never made it to State.