State Officer Blog
How do you do it?
Five minute phone calls with family during a hustle from one stop to another. Sleepless nights balancing the day’s to-dos. Driving, driving, and more driving. Showing up to school with bags under your eyes but still being ready to face the day. These are some of the...
Steak Dinners
It’s 6:00 a.m., 34 degrees outside, and you’re about to immerse into the freezing Walton Lake. As you take the first step into 48-degree water, you have three options: complain about how cold it is, don’t say anything at all, or view this tradition as an opportunity...
What is the Best Way to Eat an Elephant?
At the start of this year, I had no clue what the next twelve months would look like. Life had brought some big changes my way, I wasn’t sure what I should study after I graduated, and the only direction my feet faced was the future, though I wanted to run into the...
Just Love
There are many different definitions of love we all practice everyday, the definition I live by is one found in scripture. 1 Corinthians 13 says love is patient, kind, it doesn’t envy or boast, it isn’t arrogant, rude, or insists on its own way, and it’s not...
Become a Beginner Again
For as long as I can remember, I have always disliked not knowing the answer to a question. In school I was always one of the first students to throw my hand into the air, even if I wasn’t really sure what the answer was, simply because I was dying to be the first...
Prepping for Success
It finally feels real. All of the trainings we have attended in the last three months have been referencing the point in the year when we finally get to serve the members of Oregon FFA. We had talked about how excited we were to write workshops for Leadership Camps or...
An Industry and a Community
If the beginning of May was a glimpse into what the rest of the year could be like, let me tell you, this is going to be a great year. This month, the team and I had the opportunity to go through an impactful week-long training in Sunriver called “Basecamp”...
Small Significant Moments
Jump back in time with me to 30 days ago: it was the night before the 95th Oregon FFA State Convention started, and I was nervously preparing. Tomorrow would be a day full of interviews, connections, and long-lasting memories. Fast forward to the end of convention: I...
Cultivating Gratitude
We’ve all had those rough moments in life where we ask ourselves, “Why is this happening to me?” When we ask ourselves this question, we tend to only respond with negative answers. In the moment it’s hard to think of the positive things that can come from it. Growing...
In the Classroom
Throughout the past five years, it would be impossible to say which FFA experience has impacted me the most. From being a first year student to running for office, from SAE’s to competitions… the one thing each of these experiences have in common is the support and...
Reflecting Back
As 2022 comes to a close, New Year's Resolutions abound around us all. Before setting my goals for the new year, I find myself reflecting back on all that has happened this year. In early January, I made the final decision to run for State Office. This decision wasn’t...
Wrapping up the Year
As we begin to wrap up this year, I can’t help but reflect back on all of the incredible gifts we have received thus far. In our short eight months of office, my teammates and I have discovered that gifts present themselves in many forms. Instead of being wrapped and...