2015: A Year of Milestones

A new year is now here, and looking back over the end of this past year I’ve realized how many great experiences I had in 2014 and how 2015 is/will be a year of milestones for me.

Meet Debi

Looking back at 2014: Finally a driver’s license! No longer am I the eternal passenger in the car thanks to my new PA license and my new partner in crime (credit-card maxing) Debi (my lovely Hyundai Santa Fe).

Seoul Sunset

2014 marks my first and second times traveling abroad. Getting to travel to Trinidad & Tobago for a week and then a month to the Republic of Korea over the summer exposed me to the big global world of agriculture and agricultural education and in more ways than one has helped make this great big world feel a little smaller.

2014 also helped me continue to increase my agricultural education network, so I can now say that I have at least one agricultural educator I can call a friend from Connecticut down to Florida and Washington to Texas.

Looking forward to this upcoming year: 2015 marks the 10-year anniversary since I first became involved in agriculture. I know that at first this statement may sound strange, but for this city girl this spring marks ten years since I interviewed for an enrollment slot at WB Saul High School, which is where my agricultural journey began.

My 2nd Farm Show & 1st time showing
with my Duroc market gilt Sausage Linx

2015 also marks my 24^th birthday officially making me the old lady in my student teaching cohort, at six years older than my oldest student and ten years older than my youngest student (aah!). My birthday each year is not complete until a visit to the Pennsylvania State Farm Show and this year's 99^th Farm Show marks nine years since I first heard of and attended the Farm Show with Saul and I’ve been hooked and attending every year since. If I leave the state, the Farm Show will be right at the top of the list for what I’ll miss most about PA.

That brings me to the biggest milestone (so far) of 2015 – the semester I finally student teach (again aaahhh!!)! This semester I will be spending 15 weeks at Tri Valley Jr./Sr. High School where I will be teaching eight different classes to 8^th through 12^th grade. Student teaching is going to be a new adventure for me, culminating my past six years of college education to get into the classroom.

Students weeding a strawberry field in a
middle school Ag class in Florida in December

These next 15 weeks are going to be the most exciting and most terrifying semester so far, but looking past this semester 2015 also marks a lot more. It marks me becoming the first person in my immediate family to earn my graduate degree (sometime this year). It also marks a year of moving – first moving to Hegins, PA, my small town home during student teaching, and after May – who knows! I’m looking forward to getting my first teaching job this spring and spending my summer moving to my new home, wherever that may be!
(PA? NY? Down south? Florida is looking pretty nice right now)!

Here’s to a year full of challenges, milestones, and a lot of mileage and gas.

"Follow your arrow wherever it points..."