The next few weeks...

It seems I have a break from the whirlwind of FFA activities, especially since my softball season is preventing me from going to most banquets. Instead of letting this blog lay dormant and unused, I will instead use this calm time to look back at BLAST Off and the beginning of our year in order to both reflect on what I learned and share my new knowledge with the you, the reader of this blog. This will be done with several posts over the next few weeks. I figure if this is an unpopular move, you may stop reading and occupy yourself with something else at any time, but if you wish to stay and read, this first post gives a basic overview of the conference.

First of all, what is BLAST Off?
Well, It's an acronyms that stands for Building Leaders and Strong Teams of Officers.
We like acronyms in the FFA. It's basically a second language. But BLAST Off really is a chance for the newly elected officer team to come together for 4-5 days and grow as individuals under the supervision and guidance of highly trained national presenters in order to further grow as a team later on at NLCSO (I told you we liked acronyms).

So who are these presenters?
Each year National FFA trains a group of very qualified individuals as BLAST Off trainers. For the MN BLAST Off, ours were Mark Jewell and Marlene von Stein.

Mark is more or less a hometown kid, a past state vice president (that's a good thing) and past Region II President as well as AFSA faculty member. He knows how MN FFA works and has seen the successes and challenges of many different MN teams. We like him so much that we forgive his move to Iowa and we all support his new endeavor of taking over the Internet, one ag freelance site at a time.

While Mark gave us the inside scoop, Marlene gave us an outside view. She is a past Ohio state president and is very familiar with joys and stresses of state office. As a recent college graduate, she could relate to many of us. She also provided us with some great feminine insight of traveling in OD, who knew there were so many tricks to wearing nylons?

So time to BLAST Off (terrible pun)
I went through the conference last year and came into this year with mixed feelings. On one hand I was terribly excited to start the new year with this team. On the other hand, I wasn't sure how much I would get out of the experience having gone through the curriculum once before. Thanks to the ingenuity of Mark (he presented last year's conference too), Marlene's fresh face and style, and the growth that came from a year of service, I can confidently say I got much more out of it this year than I did before. Last year I was ready to take the world by storm, confident in about everything. This year I am much more aware of the task at hand. I know what I have to do, but am still working out just how to do it. In short, last year I wanted to be heard more than hear (I did want to learn too, I just wasn't quite sure how to go about it). This year, I already had a good idea of what the work of a state officer looked like and came to the conference with more understanding as well as more open ears and a more open mind and CASEd (that's Copy And Steal Everything) much more usable information.

What was that information?
Tune in to my next post for a start of it. It is now past my bed time (the time on here isn't right and I can't figure out how to change it), but I will write again as soon time allows. Cheers!