My 4-H Story--2006--Twelfth Year in 4-H

My 4-H Story

Written 2010 about 2005-2006 4-H year

Age: 18 (At time these events took place) 

Year in 4-H: 12

     You probably have noticed that I stated this was written in 2010.  Yes, this had been written for this blog series.  The 4-H Motto is learn by doing.  With the 12 years of being a member, I have learned many of my skills by doing many different things.  This last year in 4-H as a member will have taught me something very important that I shall remember for the rest of my life.  I had learned that is it more important to be involved in a few things, and do them well rather than try to do everything and not being able to do a great job on your work.  If you take a look at my last blog post, you will notice that I was running around crazy, and I know that there are things not even mentioned in that story because I had no room to try to place it in there.  By the time summer of 2006 came around, I started to break down and almost fully quite out of the 4-H program, but I decided to finish all of my commitments, for just running away from my issues wouldn't solve anything, and would make me look even more worse of a person.  Because of how crazy things went, I had no time to do a record book this year, and now I am fully regretting it, because this year meant a lot to me.  This is why im writing it now here in my blog.  I had learned a lot, and after this year, I became a leader and cut over 1/2 of all my involvement, so I can rather do a great job on a few different aspects of the program compared to trying to do it all.   Keep in mind, I might be missing some important aspects of what happened this year.  I'm fully righting this off of my memory, and this was 4 years ago now.

Lets start off with the Summer 2005.  My last 4-H year as a member started out with my State Ambassador Orientation.  Back in May, I had learned that I was accepted to be a California 4-H State Ambassador.  I remember the day I had learned about this.  Yes I was very super excited, but at the same time sad because I had learned that one of my best friends, Matthew, didn't get on the team.  We had our Orientation at the Headlands Institute Conference Center located in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, to the north west of the Golden Gate Bridge.  There, I met all my fellow Ambassador team mates and advisors.  Some of them I knew, most of them I didnt.  We spent a three day weekend doing team work building exercises, getting to know you games, began our planning for the 2006 CA 4-H State Leadership Conference, and had an adventure out to San Francisco.  We were excited to start working on SLC, for our conference was going to be held at UC San Diego, which made us really happy.  On the late afternoon on Saturday, the second day of the orientation, we traveled over to Sausalito, where we took a ferry to Fisherman's Warf in Downtown San Francisco.  We walked around looking at the shops, ate dinner at a very nice sea food place at pier 39, and then headed back to Sausalito to get to the camp.  When we got into Sausalito, we had a scare, for our Advisor's (Steven Worker) car  wouldn't start at first.  Luckily the car started, and we drove back to the conference center.  On the way back, we got stopped by a 5 minute red light, due to the road being one lane through a thin tunnel.  We decided to be crazy and do a Chinese fire drill around the three cars of ours.  A few other cars gave us some strange looks, but all in all, it was fun.  Later that night we had a monopoly game play that lasted for hours, and I had learned never to play Steven Worker in monopoly.

     After the Orientation, I headed down to San Diego for the 2005 ESRI User's COnference.  The past year I served as a member of the National 4-H GIS/GPS Technology Team, and I loved it so much, I decided to be apart of the team for one more year.  This year was a special year to be at ESRI, for 4-H got a Special Achievement in GIS Award, and we were there to accept the award.  Other than the award, we were in San Diego for 6 days to attend workshops, teach workshops, present our maps in the map gallery, hold our 4-H Social, and help the GPS company Trimble hold a GPS scavenger hunt similar to geocaching.  It was a very fun event.  I would send the rest of the year working with the team to help create a GPS/GIS Curriculum for National 4-H along with other projects.  One thing that was hard for the team was trying to get the youth to participate in the work after ESRI.  Many of the adult leaders would continue their commitments, but many of them wouldn't do the work.  Because I stayed and did the work, I had an opportunity of a life time be presented to me.  They are giving me an opportunity to return to the 2006 ESRI Users Conference, three times in a row which has never happened before, and I would be giving a presentation about 4-H to the entire conference delegation during the preliminary assembly the first day of the conference.  You will read more about that at the end of this blog.  

Within a few weeks from the ESRI Coference being over, I had to head up to UC Davis for SLC.  As a Computer Corps member I taught workshops, on web design and GIS/GPS, took photographs of the event, and helped put together the conference afterglow.  After SLC, I had to return home for school.  From that time until Jan, I had been working hard planning the 2006 Teen Involvement Conference.  I was elected president of the South Section Teen Council at the 2005 Conference, and it is the president who is fully in charge of the event, getting help from the rest of the officers to put on the conference.  I have to say that this was one major learning experience, but one that turned out to be great!  The conference went well, the delegates were happy, and the adult leaders were impressed.  After TIC, i had decided to stay involved with the teen council, and help them plan future TIC events as well as other sectional events.  

     With the end of being president of the teen council, live got super busy with school since I was graduating high school, and with being a state 4-H ambassador.  I would travel many times up to the state 4-H office for meetings.  A few meetings where held down in San Diego, since our SLC was being held down there.  I graduated high school in June, which was a big weight off my solders when it came to doing 4-H work.  Near the end of high school, my involvement in the AVID program was also coming to an end.  We went to an event at UC Riverside and got some medallion thing and our sashes for graduation (Which we arn't allowed to wear for graduation so I didn't see the point).  By this point, it was a really hard struggle to be on both the computer corps and the state ambassador team, for many times, the meetings would be on the same day, and State Ambassadors came first, so I felt bad that I wasn't able to give as much effort on the computer corps as I could have this 4-H year.  


     Around May, things really began getting intense.  Graduation was in a month, I was preparing for SLC (Both State Ambassador Stuff and Computer Stuff), I was preparing for the ESRI Conference, and also dealing with AVID (Organization I was involved with in High School) stuff in school.  4-H's motto is learn by doing, and this month would give me one major lesson in life, and that is to not overcommitment.  I couldn't handle all the presser and stress, and I almost had a mental breakdown.  I reached an all time low, and I almost just quite everything all together in the 4-H program.  I just wanted it to end.  This is truly the first time I have said anything about this.  No one, not even my family knows about this.  While almost going into a mental breakdown, I started thinking about everyone who was depending on me to finish my commitments that I have started, and I really didn't want to let down people who look up to me, so somehow, I was able to pick myself up again, and just try the best I can to do everything that I had said that I would do.

     In July, I traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, for the 2006 National 4-H Technology Conference.  It was an alright event.  Most of the old national tech team people were there, so we got to hang out alot.  Only thing I didn't like was that they had us do science experiments that elementary school kids do.  That was lame.  This time around, I attended a video editing track, which the subject might not have been fully 4-H appropriate because of there being guns in the video footage, but we still had a good time.  The entire conference delegation got split into groups, and we fixed up old computers that were going to be donated to family in need.  That was fun.

 End of July came around, and it was time for the 2006 ESRI User's Conference.  A few days before the trip to San Diego, three people from New York State flew into the Inland Empire, which were the people who were doing the presentation with me in front of the entire conference delegation on the opening day presentations.  We all stayed in a hotel in Redlands, and for three days, we would work on our presentations at the ESRI Headquarters here in Redlands.  The ESRI Headquarters was just a great place, and it was nice working in conference rooms and seeing a few server rooms when we did our presentation practicing.   We would spend hours in a conference room going over our presentations, our scripts, our powerpoint, and presenting.  Every few hours, we would walk to the other side of campus to a practice stage set up located in a lobby of a server room.   Each time while giving our presentations, Jack Dangermond, the president and founder of ESRI, was their watching us.  He also was working with his employees on their presentations.  One time, we walked in, and he was very unhappy of how one of his employee presentations were going.  He told them to let us get up there, so we did, and afterwards he gave a lecture how he just can't understand how us youth can do an amazing job on the presentation and how his employees arn't doing so great.  You can just feel the disappointment in the room.  It made us feel great that he really loved our presentation.  He gave us a ESRI coin for our hard work, and it seemed that this ESRI coin is something he rarely hands out to people.  

     While in Redlands, we had to stay at a hotel (provided by ESRI), which I felt was stupid since I live 5 miles away, but it was fun.  We got to show the New Yorker's around Redlands.  We also took them to the Palm Springs Tramway in the desert, which they really seemed to enjoy.  The day came to were we had to adventure off down to San Diego, and meet up with the rest of the National 4-H GIS/GPS Technology Leadership Team.  We met the team at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, were they were doing some GPS work for the zoo in the native plants garden near the California Condors exhibit.  After working on the project, we headed to downtown San Diego.  The first few days down there was the ESRI Ed Conference, which was held at the Downtown Marriott, right near Sea Port Village.  The tech team held workshops during this event.  Night time after the long day the tech team would meet in our hotel and talk about things.  Many times, the presentation crew would meet up and practice our presentation.  On Sunday, the day before the User's conference began, we got to practice on stage.  This is were we got to realize how many people were going to be in the audience.  We were in the San Diego Convention Center, and this place was huge.  Our stage was about the length of 3 school buses, and the infront of the stange, and to the left and the right was what seemed to be an endless sea of empty chairs.  We were told there were 15,000 chairs.  Behind us on stage was a massive screen.  2/3's of the screen would be where our powerpoint will be displayed.  The other 1/3 would be a video of the person presenting, so that everyone in the room can see.  There were three of these massive screens around the massive room.  We gave our practice presentation, and man I never felt more nervous in my life at that point.  We got the wireless microphones and everything.  Afterwards, we continued out our day.

 Monday came, the big day.  We were up early, and practice many times.  At this point, we were practicing with some girls from Texas, who will be doing a GIS demo at the end.  We sat near the Irish Pub Restaurant in the Marriott practicing and just dead tired.  We then headed over to the convention center.  The entire tech team was able to sit in the front row.  We got to go backstage.  Back stage was amazing, hundreds of computer and machines that controlled everything that was going on the stage.  There were a handful of people and of course Jack was there.  We had people get us set up with the wireless microphones, and we also got some make-up put on our faces to that it would help keep sweat forming on our face during the presentation.  The moment had come.  We were on stage.  There were four Podiums, equally spread apart on the stage.  The first part of our presentation was just what 4-H is about, which was done by a member named Ema.  Afterwards, me and billy, I don't remember his name, switched off presenting a handfull of GIS projects different 4-H states had done.  After our section, three sisters form texas did a GIS demo of their project they had worked on the past year.  We were scared to death until the presentation started.  Then we were so scared.  We were so tired from practicing late and working on other stuff, we just wanted to get this over and done with.  I was so tired, it was really hard to even try to not read off my notes or try to keep a smile on my face.  I was kinda disappointed that I didn't look as happy as I should up there, but I was still glad I was able to get out there and do the presentation.  There were roughly 13,000 people representing 92 different countries in the audience when we gave the presentation.  Right afterwards, we sat with the rest of the tech team, and watched more presentations.  When the assembly was finished, we got interviewed by a few different press people .  For the rest of the day, we wanted to unwind, so we went to Coronado Island to have some fun on the beach.  

4-H GIS Presentation at ESRI User's Conference 2006

John | Myspace Video

     On Tuesday, I had to leave early from the conference, for I had to go to UC San Diego, where State Leadership Conference was held.  My fellow ambassadors and I worked on Tuesday and Wednesday to get everything set up and ready to go.  The delegates arrived on Thursday for the conference.  The conference went really well.  There were a few things I personally wasn't proud of during the conference.  First, each state ambassador had to do a speech infront of everyone.  Because of all the work that I had to do for the ESRI presentation, I didn't have much time to practice this speech.  I ended up reading most of it, and I felt really bad, but I was glad I was still there and able to do it.  The other part I wasn't proud of was the day of the formal dance, the last night of the conference.  By that time, I was exhausted.  A few of my ambassadors told me I had no excuse to be tired and that I can't have a break.  They just didn't understand that I came right from another conference where I was running off little sleep already.  In the afternoon, I went to my room for something, and i layed down real quickly to take a power nap.  Well that turned out to be a two hour nap, and at that time I was supposed to be helping setting up for the dance.  I got up, headed down to the the dance area, and most of the stuff was set up, but there was still some work to do.  At this point, about 1/2 the team was pissed at me, and I tried to explain, but they didn't care.  Their egos were too big for perfect that they never gave me a chance.  As you can tell, I really wasn't the most popular ambassador on the team itself.  Over all, I survived SLC, and from all this experience, I had learned that there is a point when you could be doing way too much, and not do too great on some things.  


     SLC ended on a Sunday Afternoon.  My parents came to pick me up and I headed home.  What really sucked was that my very first day of college was the very next day.  My 4-H Career was a great one.  I got to meet so many new people, got to travel all over the country, and 4-H helped shape me to the person I am today.  Because 4-H did so much for me, I decided to become a adult leader.  Later on, in a few years, I got to be an exchange 4-H person to Alberta, Canada for two weeks, I got to still be helping out with TIC, and still on the tech team today.  But those are all stories for other blogs.  This concludes My 4-H Story Blog Series.  I hope you all enjoyed reading each one and seeing photographs from my past.