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.
Zach Hamilton
State Reporter
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