My 4-H Story--2005--Eleventh Year in 4-H
Note from John, 10/29/10- This is the last official 4-H Story that I have written in my record book. I was in 4-H in the 2005-2006 year, but I became so overwhelmed with stuff that I had no time to even work on my record book. My next post after this one will be me writing about that year and what would have been that 4-H Story with a few more things added. This is the second to last posting of the My 4-H Story Series in my blog. Enjoy. You can read the rest of my blog posts about My 4-H Story all the way back to 1995. Just visit http://johntrammell.blogspot.com/
My 4-H Story
Written 2005
Age: 17
Year in 4-H: 11
I am not ready for this 4-H year to end. I have had so much fun doing so many different things. Hello, my name is John Trammell. I am a member of East Valley 4-H Club and have been in 4-H for 11 years. I can hardly believe that next year is going to be my last year. Where did the time go?
This has been a year where I did a lot of traveling by planes, trains, and automobiles. The first major event that had me living out of a suit case was summer camp. I was the assistant staff coordinator and I had quite a bit of responsibility assigning and monitoring assistant staff members. It was a really fun summer camp. We did a lot of fishing, but I didn't catch anything. I helped many of the other campers set up their lines and I assisted the gentleman in charge of fishing with other takes as well. There were hikes and canoeing. On one of the hikes a group actually took the scenic route, in other words, they got lost. They did find Jenks Lake, eventually. It just took them longer to get there. All in all, it was a great experience.
Right after summer camp, I unpacked, did my laundry, packed again for my twelve day Washington Focus journey. After we arrived in the Baltimore airport we took a two hour drive to Gettysburg where we went to eat and then went to our hotel. The next morning we toured the National Gettysburg Cemetery, Gettysburg National Park and visited President Eisenhower's home. Our next stop was the National 4-H Conference Center located in Chevy Chase, Maryland where we stayed for five days. There we learned about how the United States Government works, how bills are written, and learned about the history of our country. During the five days we toured all of the memorials, the National Archives, the National Holocaust Museum, and the White House just to name a few places. One funny thing that happened while we were visiting the White House was that the President's dog, Barney, was being let out on the lawn. He had his own security man watching him. We got to pet him before he went back into the house. After the five days at the National 4-H Conference Center we traveled to Philadelphia where we toured Independence Hall and walked around the historic city. In the afternoon we got on the bus once again and headed to New York City. Wow! I have never seen a city so big before. Our hotel was located between Time Square and Central Park. During our five days in New York we saw two Broadway shows, went to the Empire State Building, visited Statue of Liberty as well as Ellis Island, and visited Ground Zero. We also visited the United National and other notable places. After 12 days we all flew home. Part of the Washington Focus program, just like California Focus, is doing a plan of action. Our plan of action was to create an orientation video that could be used throughout the state to show delegates what to expect on the trip. I had all of the pictures and the information-now all i needed was time to put it together. But that would have a wait for a few more days.
Once I got home I again had to unpack quickly, do all my laundry, and pack for the next adventure I was invited to attend. This time the whole family went to St. Louis with me where the National 4-H Technology Leadership Conference was being held. This conference was held at the Washington University in St. Louis. While I was at the conference, my family did sight seeing in St. Louis and other parts of Missouri. At the conference I was part of the Event Technology Track. I learned how to run all the different types of equipment for many events including a baseball stadium. We visited the Cardinal Stadium in downtown St. Louis where we went behind the technical scene on running a baseball game. Again, service learning was part of this event. Our project was to map the signs at Forest Park using GPS (Global Positioning System) unit. Forest Park is a huge park (like Central Park in New York) where the 1904 World's Fair took place. It was the 100th Anniversary of that fair. The latitude and longitude points along with important information about each sign, were taken back to the conference center and we created a map showing the exact locations of the signs. This map was then presented to the City of St. Louis so that they would be able to track, monitor, and repair the signs as needed. The last item on the "to do" list in our track was to create a video about the conference that could be used as an orientation video for future conferences. As a result of attending this conference, I became a member of the National Technology Leadership Team and a member of the National GPS/GIS Technology Team. Wow! I get to participate in many national projects and one of them is the Youth Favorite Places. More about that later. My traveling isn't quite done yet.
Once we got home, I had to quickly finish my state record book and my county record book because I was invited to attend the ESRI User's Conference in San Diego. As part of the GIS/GPS Technology Integration Team I had to present what the state of California in 4-H is doing to promote GPS/GIS projects. Two groups, one in Merced County and one in San Diego County received grants and they actually we reporting on the progress of their projects. I was our youth state representative so I got a quick training on their projects so that I could present the information. This was an illustrated talked presentation on an international level since the 13,000 conference attendees came from countries as far away as Africa, Australia, Asia, and Europe, just to name a few countries. I met many people from so many difference countries; I had a hard time keeping up with where they were from. What a learning experience that conference was. I also attended many workshop sessions on GIS (Geographic Information Systems) which is what we used to create the Forest Park map. As a tech team, one of our responsibilities was to help a company called Trimble, which makes GPS unites for professionals, do a GPS Treasure Hunt around the Convention Center. This is also called Geo-caching. It was a lot of fun teaching the participants how to read the GPS units so that they could find the correct spot where the coordinates were taking them. Once this event ended, I then volunteered to help set up the treasure hunt for the next years event. I loved being a part of this team and I learned so much about technology. I can't wait to get started on my own technology projects. Now I wanted to be a part of the State Computer Corps so I applied. I will have to wait until November to hear if I am a part of the team.
In September I was very happy when I learned that my state photography book was a winner. That was very exciting. The year before I got a second on the record book.
The club year started and this year I was president of our club. I am still the club photographer and I am also the Teen Leader for the photography project. This is also my second year as the County All-Star. I also wanted to attend National 4-H Conference so I applied. I also kept busy with school. I still am the treasurer for the South Section Teen Council. No wonder this year seemed to go by very quickly.
November came with a lot of good news. The first piece of good news was that I was accepted into the State Computer Corps. The next shock was that I was going to go have to do a workshop for WRLF. I had to get to work right away since that was happening in February. I did two workshops; one was on digital photography details and one was on Internet communications. But then the biggest surprise-I was asked to be the official photographer for the State group photos. I had to do a lot of planning. HP provided all of the printers and paper for the printing of the photos. I provided the camera and the work. I enlisted my sister to be my assistant. Together, we worked hard and the WRFL committee made over $900.00 profit from our photos. Everyone was happy.
And then the most exciting news came. I became part of the National Conference team. There were a total of eleven delegates. Once again, I didn't just go and relax. I was asked to help with the event technology so I go to work in the sound booth. I had a lot of fun learning how to work on their equipment. I did get to participate in many of the state's outings. I had a great time and I would recommend all of the teen members to apply for this great event.
TIC in January was a lot of fun. I did a couple of presentations on all of the things that teens can get involved in starting at the local level and ending at the international level. I ran for the president's office and I was elected as the South Section Teen Council President. That means, this year I am in charge of getting TIC pulled together. I am lucky because I have quite a few people (not just my mom) who said that they would gladly help me make it a success. So far, I have already come up with a guest speaker and several of the sessions. I also decided that there should be a service learning project at this event and it is in the design stages. My final goal for this year was to apply for State Ambassador. That was a lot of work. I had to fill out an application and I also had to send in a Resume. I also had to get a letter of recommendation from a 4-H youth, one from a 4-H leader (not my parents), and one from the county 4-H office. Then I had to choose a topic to do a presentation for a committee and the final step was an interview. I found out that the state office decided to make the team much smaller this year and that it would be much harder to qualify. I figured I wouldn't get a position since the other 4-H members that I competed against were top notch achievers. To my great shock and surprise-I was selected to be a 2005/2006 State Ambassador.
In the meantime I was busy trying to accomplish some of the technology team goals. I had mentioned earlier about the Youth Favorite Places. This national endeavor is to have youth locate a favorite place (not like Disneyland) that they like to go to, take a photo of it, take a GPS reading of it and then post it on the National Web Site. I successfully posted three sites and I am working on getting more done.
I also attended the National Technology Team meeting in Omaha, Nebraska in the middle of February. Boy is that land different from California. It also was very cold there with a lot of snow on the ground. It also is very flat. Their mall is quite a bit smaller than what we would call a mall. Although they had a lot of fast food places there and the prices were a bit cheaper too.
But the work doesn't stop there. This year for the San Bernardino/LA County summer camp, I was a youth director. In other words, I had people under me to get the camp ready for the campers. We had several meetings and all of them were in LA. We had a staff training weekend at a camp and I had to plan what our team was going to be in charge of. We were the Hercules Team and it was hard going since I had several of my team that moved or were not able to attend camp. But it all worked out in the end and we had a great summer camp again this year. We would love to have more campers next year. I know next year I won't have time to take a leadership role at the camp. I will be very busy with the State Ambassador work that is required of me.
The All Stars this year took on County Field Day and Dress Revue. The county had a problem in that none of the clubs had signed up to host the event. So the All-Stars stepped up to the plate. It was a lot of work. The biggest problem we had was getting a place to hold the event. Many of the public Schools no longer let people use their classrooms. We finally found a Christian school and church in Bloomington and we were able to have a very successful event. Everyone had a great time and there were many 4-H members that came county winners. I was glad through when everything was done. It was a lot of work. I can't believe that two years have already gone by and that I will have completed my second year as All Star. I loved being a part of the team and I loved doing the work. I will miss being a part of this great group of 4-H members.
Accomplishing a plan of action may sometimes sound easier than it is. My plan of action for Washington Focus was to create this digital video to provide information about what Washington Focus is all about. I wanted to actually create a DVD. I already had all the photos so I thought no problem. I also had two other team members help me. Well0not all things go according to plan. One of the team members graduated and left for college up in Fresno so I was down to two people. Both of us were very busy and it seemed like we never had enough time to get it together. Needless to say, most of the work fell on me. For the most part the work wasn't that difficult. Putting the photos into a video program was easy enough to do. I also created title slides with information about the journey. Adding music-no problem. I just had a difficult time deciding what type of music to use. The problems showed up when I had recorded readings and the synchronization became was off. We purchased DVD software so that it would be burnt as a DVD. It is during the transfer that I was having difficulties. I spent over one hundred hours trying to correct the situation. I got it close, but I still would like to improve on it a bit more. I did get the project completed and turned it in to the State office. This plan of action turned out more challenging than I originally thought it would be.
Truly my biggest accomplishment this year is having written two grants and having them accepted. My first one was through the state so that I could start a new project here in San Bernardino County-a GPS/GIS project. I didn't think I was going to get it, but I was awarded $525.00 to purchase supplies. I was excited. But the icing on the cake came when I applied for an ESRI grant for computer software so that the data collected with the GPS units can be mapped out. It was my first true attempt at writing a grant. I figured that I wouldn't get what I was asking for. To everyone's great surprise, I got the full grant for twenty five computer licenses for ArcGIS 9 worth over $37,500.00. I am now in the process of getting this going and I have several project ideas that I will be starting on this August. I have my work cut out for me this year.
I truly feel lucky that I have been a part of 4-H so many years/ As a primary member I got to learn the ropes of 4-H. Moving on as a junior member, my projects helped me learn many new ideas and meet different people in my county. Being a senior member of 4-H is where it is at. There are truly many fun opportunities for the teen members to be involved in; all they have to do is go for it. This next year is going to be very busy for me, but I will be having fun learning all of the new things that are coming my way.
Photograph Note* Photograph in blog from ESRI Conference are not from that year. The photograph is from the 2005 ESRI Conference (My second time, which isn't mentioned in this story.) I shall mention it in my next post.
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