Personal Narrative: Helping A New Cloverbud, Ebbie

Allyson’s high school activities include varsity cheerleading on the football, basketball, and competition squad. Playing clarinet in the band for the past five years, she is very active in local honors bands including All County, Solo and Ensemble, OMEA District 3 band and All-Ohio State Fair band. Allyson participates in high school choir, and is a part of mixed ensemble. She is a two-year member of Arcadia track and field team. Furthermore, is a member of the National Honor Society, and now a lifetime member of the National Society of High School Scholars. Her community activities include volunteering at The Old Time

I have known Ava Cutright since she was eight years of age when she joined our 4-H equine club, the Young Riders. At that time there were many new members in the same age range as her and then another group of older kids due to the fact they join in waves so there is much of an age gap. Her first year she was very quiet and kept to herself an had the help of her parents, trainer, myself and our advisors since I was not one yet. As she got older and talked to the older kids more she learned, not only more about her project but how to make our club run smooth. She became more voisterious when we would have meeting suggestions new ideas and providing her opinion on decisions to be made regarding our barn at fair.

For the past eight years, I have been apart of the First Town Veterinary Science 4-H Club. In this club I have held leadership positions such as reporter, secretary, treasurer, vice president, president and junior club advisor. A major take away I have from participating in 4-H is community service and learning how to feel confident in myself. By having leadership roles and being an active member in the club, I was able to feel comfortable speaking in front of others and showing off my abilities through public speaking, projects and essays. As I went through high school I was able to do presentations in front of the class, present a concussion project in front of 100 plus coaches, run for shad derby queen which included speeches in front of

Starting in seventh grade I began helping my 4-H swine group as a Junior Leader then later as a Teen Leader in my high school years. As a junior and teen leader I aided the adult leaders of the swine group run meetings, prepare the 4-Her’s for purchasing and caring for their projects, been a live example of proper showmanship of their hogs, and ensure that to members have proper uniform for showmanship at the county fair. This past year the group had four new first year members join; I was given the honor of coaching a young girl in the group one-on-one how to properly show her fair pig. Although I have always been involved in helping the entire group, being responsible for a single member was a new experience. I got to watch her develop under

Amberly’s head was pounding now. She has had a headache for a month because her thoughts in her head were running crazy. She took a glance at her reflection in the mirror and reached out to touch the image of herself. A tear slowly rolled down her rosy cheek as the thoughts of choosing between her brother and best friend.

It was a quiet warm fall night one of those fall days that you can smell the leaves decomposing on the ground at Acadia National Park on the BeeHive trail when there was a shrill shreek and a loud gasp. I had been at Acadia National Park since Friday it was Sunday my last day here. Later me and my mom had decided to go on one of the hardest trails for our last trail, it is called the BeeHive. This is a special trail that uses rungs for parts of it because of how steep it is. I was half way up the trail when I tried to halt but it was too late, the sand had concealed the wet, slippery leaves. Seconds after I was optimistic that I could hold my balance I then got sceptical about standing still I tried to move and then I dropped off the side of

Back then it seemed like every day I received death threats. Eloquently worded and anthrax sprinkled letters that consisted of only one completely capitalized word scribbled over and over again, "HONK, HONK, HONK, HONK," and occasionally pipe bombs delivered to my doorstep inside of whipped cream pies. It was easy to avoid getting blown up by clowns when their bombs were hidden so stereotypically.

Arrogance and cockiness set aside, I would make an awesome dad. I did not forget what it was like to be a child. I know that once I had a child my life would be put on hold and dedicated towards raising "The Spawn of Clarey." I would not brainwash him to be a leftist, a feminist, a rightist or a Christian, but would instead impart upon it logic, empiricism, morality, philosophy, and independence letting it choose its own path in life. And above all else, unlike nearly all my Gen X parental counterparts, I would actually stay at home to raise The Clarey Child instead of outsource it to a government baby sitting farm or "day care" concentration camp facility. It is without a doubt that I would make a great dad.

I really enjoyed both participating and learning about the “story quilt” assignment. I have always enjoyed making collages because I like looking at different pictures and choosing ones that I find meaningful. For this assignment I liked how we were given random times during the day and then told to think about our daily lives. I thought giving random times out was helpful because it allowed us to focus on three parts of our day instead of allowing us to choose which parts we were going to represent. I also enjoyed creating the “quilt” in class and having the chance to walk around and see the other “quilts” that were being created. I was really excited to see the different parts of everyone’s day as well as how they expressed these parts

One of the best projects that we did this year has to be writing our own fairytale books with Mrs. Smith. My story was Barbie White and the Seven Hairdresser. After everyone drew and colored their pictures, we put a cover and sewed the books together. With all that finished, Mrs. Smith was glad the sewing and gluing was done, we went into groups to make one book into a play. My group did the play Cinderfella, Riley, Maria, Alison, Branden, Hayden, Billy and I. It took us weeks to finish writing the script and to memorize the parts. The first time we got on stage was hard because Mrs. Smith kept telling us to slow down or to talk louder, going on stage was harder than I though. After we were on stage we had to make props and bring them in.

very active in her life and work with her to improve her writing skills, and other fine

I run my hands through my freshly cut hair thinking about how all my brown curls had been swept away from the floor of the barber shop. I'm now left with a straight cut swooped mostly to one side. It's gelled and combed neatly into place. I truly was playing the part of a boy. From my hair down to the clothes and attitude, added to the believability. I could get a lead in a movie because of how good I am at this.

Rosie learned that she was the proud owner of an Eastern Box Turtle! Excitement radiated about her as she identified the species of her turtle from the online turtle forums we found. We had spent Tuesday afternoons together, at first with the simple expectation that I would teach her and other seniors how to create an e-mail account. But what began as a tutoring session quickly became a two-way flow of ideas. We spent our afternoons talking about [her life and what she enjoyed doing] and then “inventing” new technologies that we dreamed up and designed. I met many seniors like Rosie that did not have her infectious enthusiasm, but did need new innovations to help them [in their daily life and to remain connected to the outside world.]

I thought they were happy to see me, but when I opened the door to our shack, I saw that everything we owned was neatly packed in cardboard boxes. I stood in shock. I had a lump in my throat. I wanted to just run and cry. I asked my parents.

That went well and soon I was on my way to more designs with multiple colors and new stitches. From there it was onto projects that were three dimensional.