Since my last post here, things have been as always full of action and excitement. The biggest highlight though was participating in the county fair. The first day of county fair, Monday, was entry and registration day for 4-H entries, glad to say we had a large number. That night I was able to judge the foods and produce. The next morning on Tuesday though began the long day of judging all the 4-H entries, which was a good experience for better understanding of the contests. Before I go further, I am a somewhat jack of all trades so I did have enough experience with all categories (from welding to sewing) to be able to confidently and fairly make decisions. After we had finished that, we had gone over to our 4-H livestock show which was already in progress and helped as needed. My duties there were to be a ringmaster. It was exciting to see so many youth take pride in their livestock and show that they had worked hard in order to be the best they could be. To round out the day though I spent the evening until fair closing working the county 4-H ice cream trailer to help raise money for 4-H clubs, which was a very interesting experience due to the combination of my interesting analogies and being directly next to live action wrestling. You can only to begin to imagine the laughs in that trailer. My final fair duty for the week was on Wednesday afternoon with the ag agents facilitating the Open Beef Show. Our ag agent had ask me to find a beef judge the week before since his contacts were going to be at other shows, and I managed to get of a friend of mine from Western who does judging and has been involved in 4-H livestock shows his whole life, from participant to judge. So that evening we set up the ring, held the show , and had a great time again seeing the participants put so much time, pride, and work into their livestock.
The rest of the week was a little more relaxed and was focused on contacting people for the 4-H State Communications day. Now, of all the events in my summer, this was probably the most surprising. On this day I was given the opportunity to judge the Animal Science Demonstrations. Now yes I did see some quality demos, but overall they were common themes that I am used to judging in the past. All except one that is. A young man brought in a reproductive tract of a cow, a nitrogen tank with semen straws, and an AI kit, and did a full 15min demo on AI'ing a dairy animal and proper procedures; and most of all was able to answer questions afterwards showing he knew content. Seeing this young man do this demonstration was not only awe inspiring but also great because you could honestly tell this was not just a "gimmick" for this student, it was something he truly was passionate about and enjoyed to share with others. The day though as a whole was interesting because it was my first real experience with 4-H speaking contests and I can say the scales, rubrics, topics, and set-up was very constructive and fitting to development of strong and in-depth public communication abilities.
This past two weeks has been filled with meetings, 4-H Council, Extension Council, District Board, and also meetings in reference to clubs or activities. The in-between time has been filled with preparing and planning for Cloverbud camp this weekend and my Mad Scientist Day camp next week.
I have two weeks left in my internship after this weekend. August 8th will be my last day here in the office. I am going to be sure to squeeze every opportunity out of the next two weeks to make sure that I get the full experience out of this 12 week opportunity.
Loren Gross
Hardin County
No comments:
Post a Comment