Who am I?

Who am I?

That's a question (and its many variations) I feel like we get asked a lot in our daily lives nowadays.

Who are you? Where do you come from? What's your major? What are your goals? Why do you do the things you do? What makes you - you?

One of the first things we have to do in some of our Agricultural Education courses here at Penn State is to complete a "Student Experience Inventory" and conduct a mini interview with one of our professors. So since I don't necessarily know everyone who could eventually read this blog of mine, nor can I conduct mini interviews with all of them, I will try and use this "My Life" section to answer some of the above questions and anymore that come to mind, and keep you updated on different events that happen in my life that I think help explain who I am.

So.... I am Amanda Leigh Forstater, but many different people know me by many different names and nicknames. I am originally from the City of Brotherly Love, Rocky and cheesesteaks - Philadelphia, PA. A proud alumnus of one of the best agricultural education programs (in my humble opinion) around - Walter Biddle Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences, I am a proud former officer of the Philadelphia FFA Chapter. I am no one's idea of the typical "aggie" - I am what I like to refer to as a "City Aggie," hence my creative (at least I think so) twitter handle (@CityAggie) and where part of the inspiration for the name of this blog comes from.

Growing up in Philly, agriculture is not exactly an industry or even a word we learn about or hear growing up. If you've even heard the word before, more than likely it just brings to mind the image of farming, an image that I have learned to be both wonderful but narrowing at the same time. Knowing this you might wonder "ok so how did a city girl get involved in agriculture?" and I'll be honest, it was mostly an accident but a wonderful that has changed my life for the better in so many ways.

Like most girls growing up, I loved horses - I still do. But growing up in Philly the closest I could ever get to having my own horse was having large Shepherd dogs and enjoying pony rides at zoos and fairs. But that all changed around the 3rd or 4th grade - my Pop-pop (my maternal grandfather) told me about this high school he used to drive by in the city that had horses, but he couldn't remember the name. I was hooked immediately and couldn't believe that a school like this was real, but not long after one of my parents' friends attended the School District's High School Fair with their child and brought back information on Saul High School for me. I couldn't believe it - I didn't necessarily know what agricultural sciences really meant but I didn't care, there were animal science classes and more importantly horses and there was no changing my mind - I was going to Saul.

I remember having many discussions (alright some of them were arguments) about why I was going to Saul. It was never a matter of "if" or that "I want to," deciding I was going was probably one of the first decisions I really made about where my life was going, though I didn't realize it at the time. My parents were concerned about how far away it was - it was in a different part of the city and I would have to take SEPTA (Philly's public transportation system) for about 1-2 hours each way, something I had never really done before since I lived so close to my elementary (K-8) school.

One of the many discussions I had about my decision resulted in one of the most memorable things a teacher has ever told me and while I know she had my best interest in mind when she said this, the reason this stands out to me is because it's something I hope to never say/imply/convey to my future students. I was against attending one of the high schools with a more academically-challenging reputation, purely based on my desire to pursue my animal science interests, not because of the other schools' reputations. However, I remember one of my elementary teachers who I most looked up to, advised me that if I wouldn't attend those schools than I should attend my default neighborhood high school and not Saul, because I would stand out so much more academically at a school with a lesser reputation than I would at Saul and so I would have a better shot at getting into colleges and receiving scholarships.

Now almost 10 years after the fact, I am so thankful that that time I decided to not follow a teacher's advice - because attending Saul High School opened me up to this wonderful, diverse, and unfortunately sometimes misunderstood industry we call agriculture - and that decision has changed my life and I think the lives of the people around me for the better in more ways than I probably realize right now.

If I had not attended Saul High School, I'm not sure I would have ever enjoyed school (yes I've always enjoyed learning but it wasn't until Saul that I enjoyed the social aspect of school, and really understood what being comfortable in a learning environment meant, but that's a story for another time). If I had not attended Saul, I would not have realized what "family" meant to me, or have the extended network of family and friends I do now. I would have never moved past my childish love of horses and realized how much I love animal sciences, and working with all kinds of animals - dogs, cats, cows, pigs, exotics and of course still horses (that was never going to stop, just change).

I would have never joined the best youth organization in the world, and realized the strength of influence of the blue and gold - the FFA. I would have never attended an Ivy League University (GO BIG RED!). I would have never joined Greek life (Alpha Zeta, the most impactful organization I've joined since the FFA). I don't know if I would have ever attended graduate school, or when I would have realized that veterinary medicine was not the path for me.

Most importantly, I would have never realized how much I love teaching others, and watching them light up when they find something that they are passionate about, the way I feel about agricultural education and the impact it can have on a student, no matter whether home is in the country or city.

Becoming involved in the agricultural industry has changed my life in so many ways and I can't wait to help do the same for my future students.

So... who am I? I'm a person who has grown to love and appreciate the industry that is the backbone of our society, while not forgetting that not everyone at home has had the same insight into agriculture that I have. I am a member of the Saul family, a proud Cornellian who loves that she was welcomed whole-heartedly into the PSU Teach Ag! family, who bleeds national blue and corn gold, and will always be a sister of the mode and sky blue.

I'm someone who is lucky enough to call three of the greatest places my homes - 8 "Gorges" New York square miles surrounded by reality, the Happiest Valley in Penn's Woods, and of course the birthplace of our great nation, the cheesesteak and Rocky (have you ever ran up those steps?).

I call myself a "City Aggie" and I hope this post has shed some initial light into who I am and what makes me "tick." I'll explain why I chose to name my blog "Enjoying the Interval: Cultivating a CityAggie" in another post and share some more insight into me later, but I think this post has been long enough for an intro. So to whoever my readers are, I hope you have enjoyed my rambling and I hope you enjoy my blog and all my posts, and that you too are an advocate for the agricultural industry and (to borrow the words of Dr. Daniel Foster) an "agent of change" through, and/or supporter of,  agricultural education. But if you're not THAT'S OK - because it's never to late to become one.

Who am I? Amanda Leigh.

Who are you? How do you define yourself?

Just some pictures to capture various parts of my life that make me - me