My 4-H Story By Alexis Meador Country Rebels 4-H Club, San Juan County Senior Essay Winner ( )

Transcription

1 My 4-H Story By Alexis Meador Country Rebels 4-H Club, San Juan County Senior Essay Winner ( ) Hi, my name is Alexis Meador. I am 16 years old and a junior in high school. I am home schooled, and I enjoy playing soccer, playing the piano, history, and writing. When I am not busy with schoolwork, I love to read (even if it is for school). My parents are Miranda and David Meador, and I have six siblings. I am a part of the Country Rebels 4-H Club and I have been in 4-H for 8 years, not including Clover Bud years. The 4-H projects I have done this year are Baking, Cake Decorating, Canning, and Market Goats. I am a very goal driven person and enjoy the feeling of knowing I have accomplished one of my goals. Before I start a project, I set goals and during the project, I strive to achieve them. This year in the Baking project, I set a goal to learn how to make candy. For Christmas, I made a lot of candies. When I was making the peanut brittle, I didn't cook it long enough. Even though my brittle was perfect, my peanuts were still raw. I also made fudge and chocolate, and everyone enjoyed them. Cake Decorating is a project that I am very passionate about. I set a goal to decorate a Star Wars cake. Although I didn't make a Star Wars cake I made cupcakes, close enough right? Either way, I had fun. This year I learned how to bake and decorate shaped cakes. I made a Mickey Mouse cake. The first time I made it, I did not grease the pan enough and all of the Mickey Mouse detailed features stuck in the pan. The next time I made the cake, I greased the pan more. I also learned how to transfer a design from parchment paper to a

2 cake. It's actually very simple and so much easier than trying to pipe details onto a cake without guidelines. Another project I signed up to do was the canning project. Knowing that my mom canned often, I knew that I would do something. I ended up making a batch of strawberry jam. I learned that I have to smash the strawberries very well. If you don't the juices and fruit will separate. This year in the Market Goat project, I wanted to have fun learning more about animals in general and how to properly take care of market goats. I have done the Market Goat project for 3 years, but there is always new stuff that we can learn. When I picked out my goat in February, I had a few in mind, but my eye kept returning to one particular. I knew from past experiences to trust in my ability to judge animals. When we had gone to buy goats in April, I bought that goat. I worked with him every chance I had and when the show came in August, my goat and I worked well together. He did not have as much muscle as the other goats, but we got 5th in the showmanship class, which is the only one that really matters. When I sold him, I was sad to see him go because I knew that he would always be one of my favorites. He was one of my favorites because I took the time to work with him and really learned more about what I could do to be better in my knowledge of animals. Any chance I get I am trying to gain knowledge about anything and everything I can. One of the most important things to me is my ability to lead. Some of the leadership qualities I have gained this year include motivation, creativity, communication, and finding a common goal to work toward. Throughout time, there have been so many great leaders, especially in America. Each of them had essential leadership skills, and each of them had a unique way of using them.

3 This year I had the chance to go to Washington, DC, as part of the Citizenship Washington Focus group (CWF). There were youth from all around the country, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Ohio, and so many more. The only group from New Mexico was our county, but it actually ended up helping us because we were all from the same community. During CWF, each state came up with an action plan. Something that we could do in our community to make it a better place. We had to make an action plan, and then we had to make a one-minute video to explain it. After doing that, we would post it on Instagram with the hashtag #4HCWFactionplan. The state that had the best action plan would receive a $500 grant to start the project. Because NM was all from the same place that meant we all had the same problems in our community. Although there were multiple problems in our community, we decided on something that we felt we could reasonably fix. We decided on fixing the rabbit barn at the county fair. The plan was to lay concrete in the rabbit barn so that it would be handicap accessible and so it would not flood any time it rained. The next day we made the video explaining our plan in detail. At the end of the week, they announced that we had won the grant for having the best action plan! One of the other things I did at CWF was being a part of the government committee. We would look over the bills written by different groups earlier on in the week. Then, we would pick the one that we thought was the best out of the different topics. Another thing I got to do as part of the government committee was to be a part of the house at the mock committee meeting where the bills that we had chosen would be criticized. I would ask the names of the people speaking and then say the house recognizes so and so from the state they were from. This really improved my public speaking skills because I had to be decisive in what I was saying, and then on top of that I was talking to a room (a really big room) full of

4 teenagers just like me. Sometimes it was hard to say the names because they would not tell me clearly, or they just had a hard name to say, but it was fun learning about how people felt about certain bills. It really helped me see the different points of view and opinions people had on different topics. One of the things I learned from CWF was how important being able to motivate people really is. As a leader, it's hard to motivate others if you are not motivated yourself. It's easier to motivate yourself if you like what you're doing, but it's when you don't that keeps it interesting. If you don't like something find a way to get excited about it. Then, when you are excited about it, you can transfer your excitement to others. One example of this is last year I was on the county council team as the parliamentarian. I knew a lot about the parliamentary procedure from past years in 4-H but it was not really a topic that excited me. When officer training had come around I was not really sure what I could do to help others understand and to be excited to learn. I figured games were always fun and that's what I had done in the past, and it seemed to work so why not. At first, I thought that we could play a puzzle game, but when I got them, I remembered a game I learned in the past that I could apply to my situation. At the start of the game, you have everyone sit in a chair in the circle. Then they all put their legs to the right side of the chair and lay on the lap of the person behind them. Then comes the fun part, you start pulling out chairs out from under them and see how long they can stay without collapsing. Although there were some teams who lasted a long time, they all eventually collapsed. I applied this to the parliamentary procedure by showing them that club meetings have certain things that just can't be removed in order for them to function right and not collapse. In the end, everyone was laughing and everyone learned the importance of

5 parliamentary procedure. They learned because they wanted to, and when you want to learn it's a lot easier to understand. Every year our club does a variety of community service projects. One of my favorite ones that we do every year is making fleece blankets for the hospital. Everyone brings fleece to one of the club meetings and during the meeting, we tie them. The following Saturday we all meet at the hospital and we hand out the blankets in the children's ward. Sometimes we hand out books and second-hand toys, but we always have blankets no matter what. A lot of times we don't get to hand out the blankets personally, but the one time we did it was great to see the kids so happy. There are so many opportunities to serve in 4-H as well as other opportunities you never thought that you would have. Just recently I had the opportunity to be a youth official at the state fair. I along with 13 others helped out at the state fair by organizing 4-H entries as they came in. We also helped the judges by bringing them each class one at a time. Finally, when everything had been placed lst- 6th, we put them in the display cases so that everyone could see them. An important thing I learned from this is that it is okay to make mistakes. When we make mistakes, we can learn from them, and it is much less likely that we will make that mistake again. There were a lot of entries and no one made any major mistakes because the people in charge had us check and double check everything. This helped me understand the importance of being united in a common goal. We all wanted to make sure that everything was right, so we worked hard and got it done right. I also learned something about the judging process, what judges looked for, and that actually helped me a lot. One of the projects I helped with was the quilting project. When we got to the self-determined projects, one of the first things the judge would do was to look at the project

6 book. She said that she could tell how much effort the person put into the project by how well their project book was. She also made sure that they were signed. It was sad because there were a lot of really good quilts and project books that had to be disqualified because they were not signed. This helped me to better understand some of the major details that judges look at. Being a youth official was a lot of fun, and one of the things that made it that way were the people I got to meet. There were youth from all over the state and it was great to see how 4-H is the same throughout the state, but then again how it differed from one county to the other. Everyone had their own unique personality that made the trip more fun. One of the last things I want to talk about is my experience as Fair Princess. Through 4-H I got to participate in the royalty pageant. I helped out at the County Fair handing out ribbons, helping enter indoor entries, and meeting people from all over the county. This helped me improve my communication skills, and become a better leader. I met the sheriff and so many other people that are important to our community. I was able to have all these experiences because of 4-H. Sometimes being in 4-H can seem like it's not worth the bother, but I can tell you without a doubt that it is. There are so many things that you can learn by looking at it from someone else's point of view and being creative. If you look at 4-H as a positive experience then you can learn how to be a better leader, how to interact with others, how to gain a work ethic but most importantly how to go throughout life learning and having fun. 4-H has blessed my life in so many ways. Before I joined 4-H I was just a shy, naive follower who didn't care if someone else got better by leading, because at least I was not the one in the spotlight. Now that I have been in 4-H for so many years I am an outgoing loving leader who cares about others opinions. I care because everyone is unique and brings a new and

7 interesting perspective to the table. I hope that one day I can be as inspiring as the leaders before me, and that everyone around the world can have the opportunity to be a part of something as great as 4-H. The world is better, the people in it are better, but most importantly I am better because of 4-H.