02/22/2024
In light of FFA Week, I have a confession to make. I wasn't actually very good at FFA.
I wasn't necessarily bad at FFA. But I wasn't particularly good either.
A while back, while helping a student prepare for a speaking competition, she remarked about how easy it must have been for me, back in my day. (Which I will add was not THAT long ago.)
That's a fair comment, given the fact people actually pay me to talk now.
But it wasn't true. Public speaking was my passion in FFA. But I was never great at it. I never even made it to state. Obviously, I never got to deliver that keynote on stage at convention like I dreamed about.
Another time, a student asked me about being an FFA officer. I surprised the student when I said I was, but only at the chapter level. "President then, I assume?," he responded.
Nope, not even President.
In all reality, my four years of FFA was rather unremarkable compared to many.
And that is the single greatest secret of the organization that changed my life.
You see, any organization has the power to change lives of the top few. FFA is amazing at that. I see it every time I have the privilege of working with those top kids.
But FFA has something beyond that. Something further reaching.
For every one of those top kids you see delivering a keynote, walking across a stage, giving an interview - there are a dozen more back home.
Kids back home who are quietly going about their FFA experience. Most of which, will be like mine, rather unremarkable. Yet still, their lives will be changed.
FFA supplies students with a skill set, a knowledge base, and an experience to make them country-strong and world-ready. For the top. And the middle. And even the bottom.
FFA prepares kids for success, whether they travel the country in their corduroy jacket or never leave their high school shop.
FFA, along with the advisors who selflessly lead it, has the ability to reach down to the bottom and indiscriminately pull kids up. An ability unmatched by any other organization.
FFA is life changing for the most successful. But FFA is life changing for the rest of us too.
So even though I wasn't very good at FFA, FFA was still very good to me.
Which is why this jacket will always hang in my office - as a daily reminder to when I was rather unremarkable, before FFA, and an advisor who cared, changed that forever.
