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The best learning experience I've ever had was during my semester of student teaching. This experience was both challenging and rewarding, which made it incredibly valuable. I formed a close relationship with my mentor teacher, who provided the right balance of support and challenge, pushing me forward while ensuring I didn’t feel like a complete failure. The experience was entirely hands-on, requiring me to apply my skills and knowledge daily, adapting them to real-world situations. These aspects—being challenged, supported, and actively engaged—are what made this the best learning experience for me.

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I have had many great learning experiences growing up. However, I feel that my most valuable learning experience was raising my livestock in 4-H. Through the 7 years that I raised and showed livestock, there were many challenges and rewards that came out of it. The experience that was the most eye-opening for me was my first year at Market Beef when my steer bloated and died. This was a great learning experience for me to know how to properly feed my steers when I got my new one. I was also able to learn about the different types of bloat and what caused him to bloat as badly as he did. This experience made me more aware of what and how I was feeding my animals. Raising my livestock also helped me in choosing the major I am in today in terms of animal science and providing me with a basic knowledge of the livestock industry and how I can make a difference in it.

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Growing up on a ranch and in the agriculture community came with many great learning experiences, which could be something as simple as the importance of cleaning pens. However, the one that made the most impact on me was the first year I decided to show market cattle for 4h. In total, I did 4h for 10 years and 5 of them I did the beef project. Before the beef project, I just did horses. Doing the beef project opened my eyes to so many things and I am so thankful I got this experience. I got eye-opening first-hand experiences from all that went into this project. In my first year, I bought my steer from a man named Mike Lori who was a really good family friend. I didn't just buy from him because he was a family friend I bought from him because his boys had been grand champions at the Weld County Fair. The day decided on my steer was the day I got the start to the best learning experience ever. I got to see what all went into feeding an animal from start to finish, the importance of keeping track of weights, the importance of working your animals, and the importance of knowing what your animals like and don't like. But in my eyes what makes this my best learning experience was being able to see the start to finish and knowing what meat product I was providing to the buyers. I still pride myself in knowing that I provided such a great source of protein. This learning experience is what also helped me decide on my animal science degree.

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Me and my team after finishing putting up poles for hammocks!

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I have been fortunate enough to have many great learning experiences in my life. While I was lucky enough to have several great formal learning experiences, I had many important moments of learning informally. The one that comes to mind is my experience during my Gold Award project in Girl Scouts. For my Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can earn, I designed, headed, and completed a 100-hour project. I was able to design and present a plan to my council to create a low-impact hammock campsite on an existing camp owned by the council. While I was able to have leadership over the project, my team of mentors and other scouts were crucial in teaching me skills like delegation, support, and patience. There were several challenges to finishing the project. One of these was figuring out transportation of the used telephone poles to the campsite to create the hammock holds. I was on a limited schedule, making communication and logistics difficult to navigate, but was able to receive help from my Dad and a friend Lonny to help me contact and transport the heavy poles within one day. Experiences such as this helped me to learn hands-on skills related to problem solving in stressful situations. Additionally, learning how to delegate properly, communicate effectively, and learn how to interact patiently when things went wrong was helpful to my growth as a person and in the project execution. Fortunately, I was able to be supported by both my project mentor and Scout leader throughout the project. They helped me to have initiative in my goals, while recognizing when I needed to take a break. They also emphasized the importance of good leadership through kind redirection and helpfulness without judgement. At the end of my project, I was able to create a place that has been used and sustained by many scouts and I am proud and humbled to have the experience of making that possible. Today, this experience has helped me to take initiative in my classes, student orgs, and otherwise. I have also recognized that the kindness and generosity of my team will stay with me forever, and paying it forward is the best way to continue to exemplify and grow those skills.

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Throughout my life I have had many great learning experiences, but I think my top one would be through FFA. On our family ranch I have learned skills that can get me through life, but it was always somewhere I was comfortable. FFA was a place that I had people behind me pushing me to do new things. An example would be through public speaking. I was and still am not much of an attention seeker so because put in a spot light in front of people made me go out of my comfort zone. This taught me that sometimes you need to try new things even if it is something you think you might absolutely hate in the long run.

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The best learning experience i've had was as a counselor in training at an overnight summer camp that I attended in high school. SO much went into making sure that the staff was prepared to be responsible for 20-25 kids in your cabin. This included learning how to do CPR and First Aid, all about how to be a mandated reporter, getting ropes course certified, and even getting your boating licence. The training took almost two weeks and we experienced a lot of different types of learning. For me the hands on experiences had the most impact. I ended up really liking what I was doing and was a counselor for 4 years, and even got offered a director job after leaving. It was amazing how the knowledge I gained would build off of itself and I was able to take away with me skills such as responsibility, time management, and emergency preparedness.

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Throughout high school and college, I have had plenty of learning experiences. Yet, the most influential experience happened last spring when I was involved in Ag in the Classroom. It really helped me see that learning can happen even while teaching. While my main task during Ag in the Classroom was reading to a class from an elementary school and teaching them, I also learned something while doing this. During the 45 minutes that I taught the 1st-grade class at a Pueblo elementary school, I learned how to be patient when teaching kids that young. Kids that young have short attention spans, and I had to try different things to keep them engaged. Overall, this experience taught me how to adapt to my audience and learn how to read my audience as well.