My Journey
Like everyone my journey began the day I was born. Now I know that I don’t remember that day, but it was the single most important day in my life. Without that day I wouldn’t be able to write this paper, because none of the things I’m going to tell you about would have happened. There are so many different journey’s that I have been on in my life. The ones that I’m going to talk about are my elementary school, high school, bowling team, musicals and plays, FFA, FCCLA, and Fair Queen.
Unlike most kids I never attended a preschool or daycare center. My first major calling was to attend elementary school. The day I went to take my tests was the day that I crossed over the threshold into a new world. Little did I know that for the next seven years of my life I would cross that same threshold almost every day. When I started elementary school it was a whole new world to me. I went to West Beaver Elementary School in McClure, Pennsylvania. While I was in elementary school I received a calling to be a member of my town softball team. This call came when I was in the first grade and I played up until my sixth grade year. My sixth grade year my team placed second at the season starter tournament and second at the playoff tournament. That year I realized that my softball journey was complete, so I crossed the threshold back into my old world were I didn’t play softball on a team.
Another calling that I received while I was in elementary school was to be in girl scouts. Girl scouts is an organization that teaches girls about many different things, mainly how to work together and about the outdoors. While I was in girl scouts we went on a few camping trips and I received a number of patches. On the one camping trip I fell on a sheet of ice and had to go to the hospital to get stitches in my chin. I ended up with four, and after that girl scouts just wasn’t the same for me, so I decided that my journey in girl scouts was over.
In my school district there was no middle school, it was just elementary school up to the sixth grade then straight into high school in seventh grade. At the end of my sixth grade year we had the usual sixth grade graduation ceremonies. Once again I crossed over a threshold and into a whole new world, high school. High school was unbelievably different than elementary school, but in a good way. There were so many callings to join so many different clubs and organizations.
When I started high school I attended West Snyder High School in Beaver Springs, Pennsylvania. In my seventh and eight grade years there I became a member of our schools garden club, and in my ninth grade year I was the Vice President of the club. Also while at West Snyder I had a calling to be apart of our schools plays and musicals. The first musical I was in was titled “Once Upon a Mattress”. This was a calling unlike any other that I had answered in my life, getting up in front of a few hundred people, performing wasn’t something that I had thought I could do before that. Then the next year I was in the play “ The Odyssey”. This was the first play I was in that I actually had a few lines in, which was a step further in my journey in musicals and plays.
That year there was talk that our high school was going to be combined with the other high school in our district, Middleburg High School, for a few different reasons. First Middleburg had just build a new middle school for their kids and West Snyder didn’t even have a middle school, also for the reason that our district couldn’t afford to keep all the buildings open anymore. So they devised a plan to close down a few buildings, and combine a few other ones. This was a major calling in it’s self.
I went from a high school were I had a class size of 65 students to a high school were my class size was 165 and I didn’t know half of the people in my class. I also went from having my high school being ten minutes from my house to having it be about thirty minutes from my house. They changed my school colors from red, white and black to Carolina blue, black and silver. Then on top of that they changed our mascot from the Mounties, like a mountain man, to a Mustang. Needless to say none of us were happy about this. Then to top it off we were forced to go to school with one of our biggest rivals.
The first day of school was one of the biggest thresholds I have ever crossed. The Middleburg students didn’t want us there and they weren’t afraid to let us know that it was there school and not ours. It took a few days to understand the layout of the school and where all of our classes were, but we learned. The first year there I was in the school play “Rest Assured”. After this play I decided that was going to be my last, their play directors took all the fun out of acting and I had found new journey’s to begin.
In my ninth grade year of school I joined our school’s bowling team. Most people just think of bowling as something to go do for fun, and never really think of it as a sport. This journey started because bowling was the only sport that I felt I had a chance to possibly be good at. My first year I didn’t really do all that great, I averaged an 86 and didn’t get to play in any of our games. When I started bowling I had a 10 pound plastic ball that wouldn’t hook. Then in my sophomore year I learned a lot more about what to do to get better. That year I bought an arm brace, and a new ball that was 13 pounds and had the capability to hook. My coaches taught me how to hook my ball and I worked on picking up my spares, because of that my average went up to a 120. I started almost every Junior Varsity game that year.
Then in my Junior year I decided that I was going to get serious about the sport. So once again I bought a new ball 15 pounds hooked really well and was a higher quality ball. My coaches had told me they thought I should move up to a 16 pound ball, but the owner of the bowling alley told me he wouldn’t sell me a 16 pound ball. He knew me pretty well and 16 pounds is the heaviest they make. He didn’t want to see me hurt my back throwing it. Well half way through my Junior year I ended up hurting my back with my 15 pound ball. All my major goals for that year were washed away, by back pain and lower scores. I ended up averaging a 146 that year which was lower than what I could have had if I hadn’t messed up my back. This was like my belly of the whale experience in bowling. My coaches told me that I should take it easy that season and hopefully by the next season my back would be healed.
My Senior season had finally came and I was all excited to try out my back and see how it was. I had really big plans for my Senior year with bowling, I was planning on starting every Varsity game, going to states and bowling with my team, bowling a couple 600 series’, get my Varsity Jacket, and get a scholarship through bowling. I was so excited about the season that I bought a special ball that was 15 pounds, but didn’t hook, so I could pick up this one pin that I always seem to leave standing. After a few practices I realized that I was always going to have some sort of back pain while bowling and if I wanted to keep bowling I was going to have to try to deal with it. My one coach showed me how to throw the ball so my back swing wasn’t as high. This lessened the pulling on my back when I went to throw the ball, but allowed me to still have the same reactions on the lanes. This really helped, but I only met a few of my goals for that year and that was to go with my team to states, get my Varsity Jacket, and get a bowling scholarship.
My Senior year I spent at least six days out of the week at the bowling alley practicing. We had practice as a team two times a week, I had a league once a week, a game once a week, and went with friends and family on the other days. My coach saw how hard I was trying to make the Varsity team full time so I could get my Varsity Jacket. At the end of the season he told me that I had started in enough Varsity games for him to sign the paper saying I could get my jacket, so that was one thing that year that I accomplished. I ended my high school bowling career averaging a 168, which isn’t a bad average especially with having back issues. During the season I applied for a scholarship offered by the PA State Bowling Association, the scholarship was for a high school senior bowler who was planning on attending a college or university the next year. Later in the season my coach (who was the secretary for the state bowling association) told me that they had 65 applicants from across the state, so I figured I didn’t get it. Then about a week later I received a letter in the mail saying that I was one of the five who received the scholarship. That made my season, I was the first bowler from my school to receive the scholarship, and over the summer there was a banquet that I attended to get recognition for the award. When the season ended I had to unfortunately step back over the threshold into a world where I would no longer be able to bowl on my high school team.
My next journey was the one that most shaped me into the person I am today. At the end of my freshman year I received a calling to join the FFA (Future Farmers of America). When I first received the call I rejected it, because I didn’t want to be in a club for farmers, after all I wasn’t a farmer and hadn’t planned on becoming one. Then I talked to a few of my friends who were in FFA and they told me all about it and I learned that it wasn’t all about becoming a farmer. So I decided to accept that calling and join my sophomore year.
In FFA there were many new things that I needed to learn, the main thing was how to become a better leader. In my first year I joined our chapter’s Parliamentary Procedure team, this is a team of FFA members who practice and demonstrate how to use Parliamentary abilities that are used to govern a meeting. We placed third at area, so we didn’t get to move on to regional’s that year. My advisor made every member in my class write a speech that we had to use in our local Public Speaking CDE (Career Development Event), there my advisor decided that I should move onto our area Public Speaking CDE. Unfortunately I didn’t place at the area event, but I got to see how it was run, so I could hopefully do better next year. So my first year I didn’t get to move on in either of the CDE’s I was in. Every year our FFA chapter sends about 6-12 members to the FFA National Convention, they choose the members based on a points system. Different things a member does are worth so many points and the ones with the highest points go to National Convention. During our local fair our chapter had a food stand which I worked at and earned the majority of my points. It so happened that my first year I had the highest amount of points and was taken along to National Convention. That year the FFA National Convention was held in Louisville Kentucky, at the Convention we attended many seminars and workshops showing us how to become better leaders. Also while we were there we visited the Kentucky Derby Track (largest horse racing track in the country), a thoroughbred horse farm, a dairy beef farm, and a rodeo. During an FFA member’s first year they earn their Greenhand Degree, I received my Greenhand Degree near the end of my first year. In the spring our chapter held a few chicken BBQ’s to raise money for the chapter and I helped fill racks and flip racks at 3 of the BBQ’s. Then over the summer our chapter took 20 members to the State FFA Convention that was held at Penn State main campus. I was taken along and was a part of the PA State FFA Chorus, we sang in front of about 5,000 FFA members and guests at the Convention. That year at the PA State FFA Summer Convention we had a special visitor, but they wouldn’t tell us who it was until the day we got there. My advisor had to pick five students to go up and sit on stage while the special guest gave his speech, I was one of the first chosen to go sit on stage because I was in the state chorus. It was kind of weird because they needed to do a background check on the five of us before we got there. When they finally told us that the President of the United States, George W. Bush, was going to be the special guest we were all really excited. After President Bush gave his speech her came around to all the FFA members sitting near him and shook our hands. As luck would have it a local newspaper took a picture of him standing right in front of me. A few days later my gram showed me the paper and on the front page of the paper there was a picture of me with George W. Bush.
My Junior year was my second year in FFA during my first year I learned about many more things that I could do in the FFA, so in my second year I did as many things as I could fit into my schedule. That year I was the assistant secretary for our chapter, my job was to take over as secretary at meetings when our secretary wasn’t there, which I had to do a few times that year. Over the summer between my first and second year in FFA I started raising meat rabbits to show and sell at our local fair. At the fair I showed my rabbits and placed first in the meat pen class and first in the showmanship class. Also during the week of fair I volunteered in our chapters food stand and competed in the dairy judging CDE. After fair week I had the highest amount of points again, so again I was able to represent my chapter at the National FFA Convention in Louisville Kentucky. During the convention a few other members and I joined the National Courtesy Corps, which is an organization in the FFA that during the National Convention helps to run things back stage for all of the shows and seminars. We each got a National pin for helping and a framed certificate. While we were in Kentucky we visited the Kentucky Derby Track, the only corvette factory in the U.S, the corvette museum, and attended a rodeo and a country concert. When we got back from the National Convention I attended ACES, which is another leadership convention that is set up to show chapter members how to get their communities more involved with their chapters. About a month after ACES I attended SLLC (State Legislative Leadership Conference) which was held in Harrisburg at the capital building. There we learned how bills were formed and passed. In the spring our FFA chapter held a few chicken BBQ’s to raise money and I helped at each of them. Once again I competed in the public speaking CDE, this year my speech was a conservation speech, and I won first place. I was also on the Parliamentary Procedure team again and our team won first place too. Because I placed first in Conservation Public Speaking I was invited to our area’s Conservation District’s Annual Banquet where they presented me with an award. Next I moved on to the Regional CDE’s in public speaking and Parliamentary Procedure. There I didn’t place in public speaking, but our Parliamentary Procedure team placed second, so we moved on to the state’s. The state competition was held at the State FFA Summer Convention, there our team didn’t place. I also was in the State FFA chorus again at the summer convention. During an FFA member’s second year of membership if they do so many things they receive their chapter degree, which I did my second year. Over the summer between my second and third year as a member I went with a team of four members to KILE (Keystone International Livestock Exposition) there we competed in equine judging (horse judging), there were top teams there from all over the nation, my team placed fourth out of 20 teams. Also over the summer another member and I put together an informative booth for the chapter that we entered in all of the local fairs, then we took it to the Pa State Farm show. There we placed tenth overall.
Then finally my senior year arrived, that was my third year as an FFA member. That year I the Reporter for our chapter, my job was to go to all the FFA events, take pictures, write articles about the events and put them in the news papers. Once again at fair I showed meat rabbits, but I also showed my breeder rabbits and my buck won best breeder rabbit at fair. For the third year in a row I worked in our chapters food stand and basically ran the stand, because after the first year I seemed to be the one everyone came to when they had any problems in the food stand. For my third year in a row I had the highest amount of points in our chapter and was taken along to the National FFA Convention, this year the location of the convention was changed. It was moved to Indianapolis Indiana, they did this because they move the convention every six or seven years. To me this move was a bad choice, Indiana’s convention center was way to small for 50,000 FFA members from across America. Instead of having everything in one building they had it in four different buildings that we had to walk in the rain to get to. Even thought we had to do a lot of walking we still had a lot of fun and leaned more about leadership. While we were there we visited the; Indiana 500 speedway, Perdue University, attended a concert, rodeo, and on the way back we stopped at Ohio State University. We received a personal tour of the meat handling area of the campus, because one of the professors was related to one of the FFA members from our chapter that had gone along with us. Once again I wrote a speech for our area Public Speaking CDE, this year I placed first in Conservation Public Speaking, and moved on to Regional’s. There I placed eighth out of twenty speakers, so I didn’t get to move on to states.
As a Senior in high school most FFA members would have already received their Sun Area Degree’s, and only have to worry about getting their Keystone Degree’s. Unfortunately for me I was a year in degree’s behind everyone, so in my Senior I had to fill out an application for my Sun Area Degree and one for my Keystone Degree. I received my Sun Area Degree in November that year, the Sun Area Degree wasn’t really a big deal, everyone who applied for it received it. Then in January I received my Keystone Degree, now that is a big deal. Only one out of every 100 applicants actually get their Keystone Degree, it is the highest degree that Pennsylvania can bestow on an FFA member. Needless to say that day was the apotheosis of my FFA journey, so far. I am currently in the process of applying for my American Degree, which is the highest degree the Nation can bestow on an FFA member. My journey in FFA is by no means coming to an end and may run my whole life.
I received a new calling in my Senior year of high school, that calling was to join our school’s FCCLA (Family Career & Community Leaders of America) club. FCCLA was a lot like FFA. Except FFA has to do with leadership in agriculture, and FCCLA has to do with leadership in the community and Family & Consumer Science related topics. Even though it was my first year in the club I ran for an office and became the chapter’s Reporter. In FCCLA the Reporter has the same job as in FFA, so it was easier for me. I was the Reporter in FFA and FCCLA at the same time, so I had all the contact names I needed for the local newspapers. In the fall of that year there was a Regional FCCLA meeting at a local restaurant, at that meeting we attended different seminars about leadership, and self defense. During my year in FCCLA we visited a local nursing home and played games with the residence, we all had fun and the residence really enjoyed it. Then around Christmas one of our members dressed up as Santa and we went up to the elementary school and got pictures of all the kindergarten kids on Santa’s lap. We put the pictures on a snow globe magnet so the kids could give them to their parents to hang on the refrigerator. Through out the year our club held fundraisers such as our annual rose sale on valentines day to raise money for our chapter’s Relay for Life team. The relay was help June first and second, our team had to raise a certain amount of money to donate to the Relay so we could be a team. Walking at the Relay was definitely my apotheosis in FCCLA, it was unbelievably moving to be out there walking with all the cancer survivors and people who were fighting cancer at the time. That really showed me that what we had been working so had to raise money for all year was really worth it. When I graduated high school I had to cross back across the FCCLA threshold into a world where I could no longer be a member of that amazing organization, I could only watch once again from the side lines.
While in my Senior year of high school my FFA advisor showed another calling to me, that was to compete in the Miss Beaver Community Fair Queen competition. At first I refused this calling, for a few reasons. First I thought the competition was like a beauty pageant type thing and I had never been in anything like that before. Also I was worried that if I won I wouldn’t represent my fair as well as I should. Then after talking with my advisor and learning more about the competition I decided that I would accept the calling. The competition was to be held on September 23rd 2006, which was the Saturday during fair week. Before that day I had to write an essay on “What my fair means to my community,” the judges were supposed to have read that and judged that before the face to face competition started. The day of the competition I had to do an interview with the three judges, then go onto the stage and give an introduction on myself. The last part of the competition was to get up on the stage in front of 100 people and give my five minute long speech on “Why You Should Come to My Fair.” After that all the judges met to talk about who they would pick to win. The short moments we were on stage waiting for the announcer to inform everyone as to who won were a few of the longest in my life. They announced the runner up, and it wasn’t me, then they announced the winner and I about fell off the stage, it was me! For the rest of the day I walked around the fair with my sash and crown on and everyone kept coming up to me and congratulating me on winning.
Then after fair week was over there were still many things I needed to do as fair queen. First I had to go to the state fair queen competition that was held in Hershey Pa. There 58 girls, including myself, competed to become the state fair queen. I didn’t win state, but I tried my best and that was all I could do. After that I gave speeches an FFA Banquet, a fair board meeting, and at the summer fair board picnic. I organized and ran a petting zoo for the little kids at the Relay for Life that was held in June. I helped work at the pork sandwich stand during events, made a informational booth for Ag. Dairy Days at our local mall, and was in countless parades over the summer. By the time fair rolled around again I had a whole new out look on being fair queen and I wasn’t really ready to give up my crown, but wanted to so someone else could have the great experience that I did. During the week of fair I helped at the livestock auction, at the tractor pulls, then crowned a new queen. I would have to say that crowning a new queen was my apotheosis in my fair queen journey.
My Senior year of high school was a very busy year for me, another calling I received that year was to go to Camp Mt. Luther as a Counselor. Camp Mt. Luther is where every year the fifth grade classes at our schools middle schools go for three days. They get to go out in the woods and live in a cabin for those days. They learn first hand about many different things in nature, and about the different animals that are native to PA. My job as a counselor was to sleep in the cabin with my group of 12 girls, I was the one in charge of those 12 students, and if anything would have happened to one of them it would have come back on me. I helped them at their stations they went to and made sure they go there on time. It was a learning experience for both myself and them, I had never been in control of 12 fifth grade girls before, and they had a lot of questions about life at the high school. By the end of the week it was hard to say goodbye, most of my girls had started to think of me as a mother figure and were jokingly calling me mom.
At the end of my Senior year my class decided to go on our class trip to South Carolina, Myrtle Beach. We were there for a total of four days, during that time we got to spend some time at the beach, but they tried to keep us going to different places. We ate at, the Dixie Stampede, and Jimmy Buffet’s Margaretville. We visited a go cart track, a shopping center, and a reptile zoo. While we were there we went on a few tours, the one was a ghost tour and the other was an informational tour of Myrtle Beach. When we got back from the trip it really started to sink in that we were really graduating, the end of our main journey was really coming and were soon going out into the real world. Then finally June first came and we were all at the high school as a class one last time. All our families and friends were there, even my fifth grade teacher who had promised us in fifth grade that he would be at our graduation, really was there. We crossed back over the threshold into a world where we wouldn’t have to wake up a five am to go to the high school anymore. After receiving our diplomas we were all kind of sad, didn’t really know what to think, because it hadn’t really hit us as to what really happened. All we could say is we did it!
Most of my way through my journey so far I’ve been working. I started out when I was 12 years old, my parents own their own machine shop. I was always down there helping work on motors and doing as much as I possible could. Also my uncles and aunt have a produce stand and since I was about 12 years old in the summer time I would go over to their place and help. Sometimes I was in the stand selling the produce, but most of the time they liked to have me up in the field all summer working with them helping to pick the produce and take some of it to auction. Then my Junior year of high school I decided that I wanted a job outside of the family. So I applied at a local convenient store and got a calling saying they wanted to interview me. Two nights later they started training me to run to cash register, make hoagies and all the deli foods, and stock shelves. A few weeks after I started there they taught me how to run the lottery machine, that took me a few weeks to master. When I started college I had to quit these jobs, because I live about three and a half hours away from IUP. So going to college was what I would call the belly of the whale stage for me having a job, but when summer vacation starts I will differently be getting another job.
A few months after graduation I received another major calling, moving to college. When college started I really didn’t know what to think about that journey, but as time goes on I’m starting to realize that its not as easy as high school. But then again nothing worth having is easy, so college has to be hard, because a college education is definitely worth having. With in the first semester of me being in college I had to go home to be the maid of honor in my best friend’s wedding. I couldn’t believe that my best friend who is my age had just got married, but I was really happy for her. Then a few months later, over Christmas break, I was in another one of my friend’s weddings.
I’m really starting to see everything change now that we’ve graduated high school. Everyone’s moving on with their lives, leaving our hometown and trying to find something in life that makes them truly happy. Maybe it’s a good change, maybe it’s not, I’ll have to continue my journey to ever find out.
