Believe it or not, this organization showed up out of the blue and changed the way I lived my life completely. State FCCLA staff, Wendy and Shelly brought FCCLA to my Early Childhood and Elementary Careers class and rocked my world a little over a year ago in some unexpected ways.
For one, I’m definitely no longer shy anymore. It is such an incredible feeling to not want to hide behind a rock every time I have to stand in front of an audience or talk to people I do not know. It was something I could not even imagine last fall! This has helped me immensely. Without this new confidence, I would not be able to do my job. I work in a coffee shop, which means interacting with people on a daily basis! Thank you to FCCLA for teaching me to be confident. COMMUNICATION SKILLS!
Speaking of communicating, I can now send emails! Before, to me emails were for professionals and people born in earlier generations than I. Why not just text? Well, now I understand why and how to write an email that was obviously not written by a teenage girl. I have emailed some Minnesota representatives’ assistants to get meetings with them while we were in Washington, D.C. this past July. I have been emailing people to invite them to take part in the career fair at the state conference! I have also been able to email my professors without any problem. It has been a very useful skill to have, and it will only continue to gain value as I get older. Emailing is only one example of my newfound communication skills. Thank you FCCLA for teaching me to be able to communicate with people in ways I was unable to before. LEADERSHIP!
The last major skill I have learned and probably the most important is leadership. This probably seems cliché to you, however I am completely serious. It goes along with the communicating and being confident, as well as knowing how to handle myself in public and being a role model as much as I can be. Being a leader means holding yourself together, even when things (and occasionally people) around you may be crumbling to pieces. When you are a leader, people look up to you and look to you to lead them, so be a leader and lead them. This has proven to be helpful more and more every day. It comes in handy at school, at work, and in many other settings as well. Thank you to FCCLA for giving me the gift of leadership and teaching me how to use it.
Odds are, if you are reading this, you are in FCCLA as well and may have learned similar things or at least be in the process of learning these things. My only regret when it comes to FCCLA is FCCLA and I not crossing paths earlier. FCCLA would not be FCCLA without the incredible people involved in it, and a major part of me being able to learn these things are the people who have become a part of my life since joining FCCLA; Wendy Ambrose and Shelly Barrett especially, my advisers Cherry Cramer and Mrs. Anderson, along with all of the state officers, advisers, and members I have met so far.
