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SHOW NOTES INTRODUCING ASHLYN QUINN! What if your student has a passion that is not related to agriculture, they want to be part of the FFA and they want to combine the two?  Is there a way to get it done? Our guest today, Ashlyn Quinn, did exactly this in a rural part of Illinois.    In the Illinois FFA there is a proficiency category of safety.  Through Ashlyn's work as a lifeguard, she was able to incorporate her job working as a lifeguard at the local YMCA with her time in the FFA.  This led her to win an Illinois State Proficiency Award in this very category. Ashlyn is done with high school now, and she is on to studying statistics and natural resources at Carl Sandburg Community College in Galesburg, Illinois. SUPERVISED AGRICULTURAL EXPERIENCE: Safety & Agricultural Education HIGH SCHOOL: Monmouth Roseville High School; Monmouth, Illinois MASCOT: Titans FFA ADVISOR: Jason Kilburn CONTACT INFORMATION FOR ASHLYN QUINN: Click on the picture below to be taken to the Monmouth High School Ag. Department's website: Ashlyn's FFA Advisor's Email Address: jkilburn@mr238.org  Monmouth High School's Telephone Number: 309-734-4712 Transcript Of Interview: Ashlyn welcome to the show thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me You bet I am looking forward to the conversation. You've got a lot of stuff going on that I've never covered on the show before so I going to have a lot of questions for you I think. Why don't we start out like this I'd love to just ask you a few questions just about you so our audience can get to know who they're listening to, is that okay with you? Sounds fun Alright. How old are you now? Now I'm 19. Okay, and when you are at home when you're not at school are you on a farm, are you in a town or something kind of in the middle of those two. I'm in a very small town. Okay is that Monmouth? Yes Okay, how small? What's the small town in there? Our town is less than 10,000. I'd say our high school has about 500 students altogether and that's with a bunch of other smaller towns where it got consolidated school districts so the whole area is pretty small. All right. Now how long have you been part of the FFA? I joined as a freshman. Okay as a freshman and what brought you and why did you want to be a member? My family members were, my sister was an associate before me. My grandparents my dad they were all in FFA and at first when I was kind of in 8th grade it wasn't a "hey you should do it if you want to" it was a kind of like you're going to be an FFA, you don't have a choice we've all done it you're going to do it too. But I don't really have a problem with... I'm with the organization myself anyway. Okay, so you had a deep family legacy and a lot of people saying you're carrying this forward.  Yeah  Okay. Any brothers or sisters to help you to carry that tradition on if you hadn't wanted to? My older sister was in FFA and now I will carry it on. Okay, so you're it, you are the last one. Yeah. Okay! Well I mean you ended up being your chapter's president so something must have worked out there for you. Yeah  That's great. Why did you choose to be an officer? I had some very good friends in FFA were all older than me and they helped me and they encouraged me to run for an office my freshman year and kind of just get on the team even if it was like a really lower position. And then they kind of kept pushing me to keep going each year and try for a higher office and my advisor of course was pushing me.  And I had some great student teachers that I had that were there in my time in FFA and even they were pushing me to try to be better to try to achieve that higher office and yet involved as I could be. Okay. Did you have an interest in agriculture before you became an FFA member? Oh for sure. Both sides of my family farm so I've grown up on farms and been around it my whole life. Okay.