Embrace Change

As officers, my teammates and I have a few different outfits we change in and out of for events and conferences.  Whenever we are going to go to change clothes, my team and I have a saying that we are eager to share. It goes a little like this:

Me: “Hey guys, I’m going to change.”

Team: “DON’T CHANGE WE LIKE YOU JUST THE WAY YOU ARE!!”

We always enjoy the chance to have a little fun with each other and have a good laugh. However, the more I think about it, I come up with a question: What’s so bad about change?

Let’s just unpack this for a second. After a quick search via Siri, (thanks Siri for listening to me for once), we can find that change is a verb that means to make or become different. It gives examples of the stoplight changing from green to red or the seasons changing from summer to fall. The simple definition makes change seem like it’s not that big of a deal, when really it can be a huge deal.

Change is a part of life. Almost everywhere you look, you can see some type of change. The crops growing and then drying, the sun changing position in the sky as the day goes by, and even the changing weather. The same goes for people as well and all aspects of our life. Let’s say that you are going to change your profile picture on some type of social media. You may be doing it because you have a really neat picture that you want to show off or represent you, or maybe you want to show off your support to something like a movement (#FFAproud y’all), or you haven’t changed it in like four years so you feel it just needs to happen. Whatever that reason, you are driven to change. It’s no different than those crops or the sun or weather, they also have a reason for changing. Makes sense, right?

So why is change so scary?

Recently I had the opportunity to travel back home for a few chapter visits to schools in my area.  When I walked into my door for the first time in months, there was my mom in the kitchen, my dad in the family room watching football, my cat patiently waiting for me by the door, and the sheep sleeping outside in the pasture. It seems as if everything was back to the way it was before I had left: like I was just coming home from work or an FFA event. I headed back to my bright orange and blue colored room that I thought was the coolest middle school, my bed waiting to be sat on and hear all the latest gossip, and finally my desk awaiting me with the mail I had missed while away. I gave a quick glance over my desk and saw my September edition of Vogue, a few bank statements, and something larger that grabbed my attention. It was the yearbook from my senior year.

On the cover I saw some of my old friends, as well as myself posing awfully cheesily. I opened up the book and took it to Chase to show him all that I had done in my crazy year as a senior in high school. There were the marching band performances on Friday nights, the dances that I helped plan and judge the fashion at, the student sections at all the basketball games, the FBLA trips and competitions, all of my amazing times at the many speech competitions I loved so dearly, many different involvements in FFA, and even more. I saw a quote from me about how I felt about the finals that everyone dreads, and it was about how I needed to ace my calc test otherwise I was going to die. Chase and I laughed at the quote and my cheesy face pictured and I said, “That’s definitely something I would’ve said last year.”

That made me stop laughing and think for a minute. What do I mean by “last year?” Have I really changed that much in just a year?

Later on that night, I got to finally go and hug my sheep. This was a huge moment with a few tears because my sheep had been my world growing up, and not being able to see them every day had been a little bit of an adjustment. Oscar (my Oxford ram who is about up to my chest in height) put that to an end pretty quick when he knocked me down and started chewing my hair. I did my rounds and finally ended on Oscar’s mother, Pepper. She always wanted a hug from me. But not that night. She just walked away. She probably was just in one of her moods or tired, but I again thought, “Have I changed that much that Pepper doesn’t recognize me?”

As I was going through the yearbook once again later that night, I decided to take it back even further and started looking at pictures on Facebook. I looked all the way back to my freshman year of High School and it was easy to see that I was not the same person. But as I kept thinking about it, I realized that it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The experiences that I had built me into the person that I am today. There were times where it seemed like I had hit rock bottom and there were times that I felt like I was on a mountain top, but all of those experiences taught me who I wanted to be. change was something that I needed to grow as an individual. If I hadn’t changed, I wouldn’t be at a college that I love learning about something that I am passionate about.

Think of how you’ve changed. What aspects of your life has changed? Are you the same person you were last year? What experiences caused that change in your life? They may have seemed scary at the time, but now you can look back and see how it turned out to be a good thing.

Change is scary because you aren’t sure what the future holds. But I can tell you that you can handle it. I promise. The only hard part of change is the fact that you are scared. Change is happening all around you even in the simplest of ways, so make the most of it.

I will leave you with one of my all-time favorite quotes. “One of the happiest moments of your life is when you find the courage to let go of what you can’t change. Rather than being afraid of change, embrace it and become who you want to be.”

Zach Hamilton

State Reporter

Strive for Progress, Not Perfection

Nobody is perfect. It is something we have all heard thousands of time, but for some reason most of us ignore the phrase completely. I am one of them. Although I know that nobody is perfect, I strive for perfection on a daily basis, and lately I have realized that being a perfectionist, isn’t always perfect.

It all started at a very early age. In school we were taught that mistakes were bad. Mistakes were things marked with a red ink pen, and I learned to hate red ink pen. I never wanted to see red ink marked on my neatly written papers, so I worked hard, trying to make everything perfect. This “perfect’’ attitude is something I have carried with me my whole life.

I was only 456 hours in office when I was asked to pick a quote to live by this next year; a quote that had meaning to me, and could serve as a token to live out this next year while serving the 14,734 members of the Iowa FFA Association. I chose the quote “Strive for progress, not perfection.” This really stuck with me, and as the day went on, I thought more about it.

Too often we get caught up on the little things. We either over-dramatize mediocre things or underplay the most important. We take too long to do the simple things, taking time away from something with more meaning. Too often we get caught up trying to meet the needs of all the people around us that we don’t take care of ourselves. We may be perfectionists, but we need to be striving to make progress.

Perfection in itself is not a bad thing. A perfectionist is defined as a person who refuses to accept any standard short of perfection. If we don't strive to do something well and give the best possible result, then what's the point? Right?

We need to focus more on progress, rather than perfection. Progress is defined as the forward or onward movement toward a destination. One can move forward or onward, but without perfection, are they really moving forward in the right direction? It is all about finding a balance. I urge you to find the balance in your life, by striving for perfect progress.

Savannah Keitzer

Southeast State Vice President

Subtle Influence

I want to start by telling you a story from April of my freshman year in high school. I was sitting in the Memorial Union on the Iowa State campus with some members of my FFA chapter after the barbecue during State Leadership Conference. I had been on the phone calling some family and friends about how I did in the Creed Speaking contest earlier that day, and the last person I needed to talk to was my dad. As I was getting off the phone with him, I ended by saying, “Thanks Dad, have a good night, I love you.” I didn’t realize that everyone had quieted down and was listening to me as I wrapped up the conversation. Once I put the phone down and looked up at everyone, a person in the group kind of laughed and said, “Why did you tell your dad that you loved him?” I answered by saying, “I don’t know when it is going to be the last time I talk to him, so I am going to tell the people I care about what they mean to me when I have the chance.” Needless to say, everyone got pretty quiet, and no one else said anything to me about it.

Now, this isn’t the part of the story I want to focus on today. Rather, I am going to look at something that happened a few weeks later because of that story. I was sitting in the lunch room back in school when a senior walked over and asked if I had a few minutes. I got up, and we walked out into the hall where I was asked if it was alright if the story I shared with you could be used as part of the upcoming baccalaureate speech. This senior then told me that what I said really meant a lot to them, and it changed their perspective on how they live their life. The following week I decided to make the trip back to school and attend the baccalaureate service just to see what was going to be said. When that senior got up on stage to give the speech, they ended by telling the story. The closing line was, “Make sure when you leave tonight to tell your mom and your dad, tell your grandma and your grandpa that you love them and tell the people that are special to you what they mean.” Needless to say, I watched most of the mothers, grandmothers, and quite a few of the dads and grandfathers walk out of the auditorium drying tears from their eyes.

For me this was a moving experience for two reasons. First, I was able to see the impact I had on someone’s life, and how because of that, they were able to share it with others in hopes of changing their lives. Secondly, it caused me to realize people are always watching you, and that even some of the simplest things can make a huge difference. Now, I am not trying to toot my own horn here, but I am hoping that if you take one thing from this, it is that every day, you do things that make a difference in the lives of someone around you. Even though you will probably never know it happened, YOU have influence in the lives of others. Every day you are making a difference in the lives of the people around you, so how are you going to live now that you know this?

Cole Moody

Northeast State Vice President