Reaching a goal and the work it takes to get there can be a long, trying process. My goal is to make it to Nationals on the Nursery Landscape FFA team. I have competed on the Nursery Landscape team since I was a freshman. As a team of three freshmen and one sophomore, our main goal was to place as high we could as individuals which would help our team score. At State Convention, I wanted to place in the top twenty as an individual. Before you can reach the State Convention, you must place in the top teams of the region your FFA Chapter is in. To reach my final goal of making it to the National FFA Convention, I needed to get to regions, advance to State, and place first as a team. After we win the State competition, we then would be competing
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First of all, there were a total of 140 high school aged students competing in the competition, so the odds of placing in the top twenty were very slim. At Regions we were just given branches to identify. Now, at State we needed to be able to identify the samples by looking at the entire tree. To identify you are supposed to be able to look at the buds and leaves of a tree. Most of these trees were so high up that no one could possibly reach the branches to even look at the buds and leaves. Then came the next problem with the State competition. The trees that were too high up to reach were faced into the sun. We had to look up into the sun and try to identify the tree while being blinded. However, this would not be the last problem with the State competition. We were then given diseases to identify. However, they did not have the sample labeled as disease. If the sample they give you to identify has a disease and they want to know what disease is, they must have a card that says disease next to it. We were given two diseases to identify. We did not find this out until after the competition, however, when we were reviewing the samples that we just identified. This competition was a mess due to the lack of organization. We were actually very proud of ourselves for placing in third. I did not reach my goal of placing in the top twenty. However, I did place twenty first. I was happy with what I had …show more content…
Preparing for Regions and then having two weeks to finish learning everything before State is tough. A lot of effort and hard work have to be put into any FFA competition. Every team must have practice to learn all the required materials. Sometimes that means staying late after school or coming in early in the morning to learn everything. I learned that when you set a goal it is going to take effort, hard work, and dedication. This year we are hoping to place first at Regions. However, our ultimate goal this year is to place first at State so we can advance on to the National competition in October. We are going work together as a team and put all the effort that we have into winning State this
First of all, there were a total of 140 high school aged students competing in the competition, so the odds of placing in the top twenty were very slim. At Regions we were just given branches to identify. Now, at State we needed to be able to identify the samples by looking at the entire tree. To identify you are supposed to be able to look at the buds and leaves of a tree. Most of these trees were so high up that no one could possibly reach the branches to even look at the buds and leaves. Then came the next problem with the State competition. The trees that were too high up to reach were faced into the sun. We had to look up into the sun and try to identify the tree while being blinded. However, this would not be the last problem with the State competition. We were then given diseases to identify. However, they did not have the sample labeled as disease. If the sample they give you to identify has a disease and they want to know what disease is, they must have a card that says disease next to it. We were given two diseases to identify. We did not find this out until after the competition, however, when we were reviewing the samples that we just identified. This competition was a mess due to the lack of organization. We were actually very proud of ourselves for placing in third. I did not reach my goal of placing in the top twenty. However, I did place twenty first. I was happy with what I had …show more content…
Preparing for Regions and then having two weeks to finish learning everything before State is tough. A lot of effort and hard work have to be put into any FFA competition. Every team must have practice to learn all the required materials. Sometimes that means staying late after school or coming in early in the morning to learn everything. I learned that when you set a goal it is going to take effort, hard work, and dedication. This year we are hoping to place first at Regions. However, our ultimate goal this year is to place first at State so we can advance on to the National competition in October. We are going work together as a team and put all the effort that we have into winning State this