How FFA Impacts Career Choices

I’ve been in FFA since the eighth grade but I’ve really been involved for many years before.

FFA has been a huge part of my education as I’m getting to learn all the technical things behind food and animal production, broadening my knowledge through team building and activities, as well as FFA helps build leadership skills that make life-changing impacts on our younger generations. For example, if there is a student who wants to learn about cars and the mechanical parts behind it, we offer an Ag Mechanics judging team where they are able to learn and even have hands-on experience with parts of cars.

FFA offers many life skills, including public speaking, leadership, teamwork, good sportsmanship and much more. We show how you can be competitive and have fun all in one. We offer more professional competitions such as job interviews, prepared speeches, discussion meets, and parliamentary procedure. Our judging teams offer experience with collegiate judging, if that’s a career you’re interested in. We have livestock, horse, poultry, vet science, floriculture and many more teams. The judging team you pick can even help impact your career choice. Our poultry team can introduce your love for poultry science.

I’m on the vet science team, which offers a great introduction to being a veterinarian. The contest offers an identification list with parasites, medical tools, and breeds of animals.

FFA has opened many opportunities for me and made narrowing down a career option easy. Many students who join FFA go to college and study in something that FFA introduced to them, whether that is agriculture business, poultry science, livestock judging, veterinary medicine, etc.

One of the many opportunities FFA can offer is a job shadow or internship opportunity at a place of work you might be interested in. This can also help put your foot in the door for a job as you graduate, or if it’s not the job for you then at least you know. This is how FFA has impacted my way of looking at a career. Hopefully it will yours too.

Submitted photo National FFA Vice-President Erik Robinson visited Lincoln High School and facilitated workshops for Lincoln FFA members.