Education plays a vital role in shaping successful people. It gives us the opportunity to become a productive member of a civilized society by acquiring all the necessary skills. We learn how to meet challenges and overcome obstacles. We learn how to become an integrated personality and maintain the perpetuation of our culture. People learn basic norms, rules, regulations, and values of society through education. Moreover, high quality education enables us to lead a successful life, enhances our intelligence, skills, knowledge, and brings positive changes in our life. Education lays the foundation stone for our future. An illiterate person can find it very difficult to cope with some aspects of life and fully understand them. Education expands our vision and creates awareness. It helps us develop a disciplined life and provides us with better earning opportunities. It enables us to know the world beyond our own surroundings. Education is also a prerequisite of the prosperity and modernization of any country. It represents a country's success and their ability to be successful. Education allows for innovation and new breakthroughs in agriculture, medicine, and science. Without education, humans would not be able to learn from or comprehend situations correctly and never be able to progress as a civilization. Many of the most successful people can credit their success to education. As Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. This stands as a very true statement, as knowledge is power. In my life, education is the leading reason to my success and will be the reason for my future success. Although, education symbolizes much more than being smart with books and getting good grades on tests, education is also the experience gained from an event. Being able to learn from mistakes and improve is key to a successful life. I've learned how to better myself through experience and better my chances of becoming successful. Education has allowed for personal growth. Education has provided me with everything. Education has given me an advantage into life. With education I am able to pursue a hgher education in college, from here I can obtain a degree and follow a career path. Education will allow me to have a job and make money, leading to a successful life. Education will allow for financial success. Education has also provided me with something to work towards. There are beenfits to being academically successful such as scholarships, colleges, and becoming successful. In school, I strive to do my best as I have a 4.0 GPA and have maintained it all through high school. This is important as it shows my dedication and hard work to keep my 4.0. Education has provided me with endless opportunities. With education, I have the ability to grow as an individual and become financially successful. Without education, I wouldn't be where I am today. I wouldn't be able to follow my dreams and achieve them. Education is responsible for all of this,

I live in Eads, Colorado. It's a small town, and when I say small, it's very small. We have less than 700 people living in our town, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. The community and sense of safety are unbeatable as compared to anywhere else. With such a small population, there are no big businesses that come into our town. There's a local pharmacy, grocery store, convenience store, bank, newspaper, and a few restaurants. Now, this isn't very much, but they offer benefits that a big business can't match. In my community, these small businesses offer friendliness and truly care about their customers. For example, in Wal-Mart you won't find a worker helping an elderly lady collect her groceries. In Eads, you'll find just that. Being such a small town, these businesses have that sense of family. Everyone knows everyone and that stands out to mean a lot. You don't want to have a bad reputation with a customer that could limit sales and business, and with already low consumers, every person counts. Small businesses have to do different things in order to attract customers. They're competing with huge franchises that offer low prices and availability and that has to be combatted with the community aspect. I feel that lots of a small business's success also goes to customers themselves. As I mentioned, many customers may be drawn to lower prices and products more readily available, but it's the thought behind it that counts. A small business puts its money back into the community. By shopping locally, that money goes back into the community further benefiting the area. This doesn't happen with franchises. I have had the experience of small businesses as my mother owned her own coffee and pizza restaurant. She owned it for more than 10 years and worked there almost every day. Because the town was so small, help was hard to find, and I was often asked to come in and help. Instantly, I met new people and made friends with the community. Her goals definitely weren't of making money, that was just an added benefit. My mother's goals were to give back to the community and provide something to them. With a very bare town, we don't have much to do, and by providing a restaurant, it gave people something to do. It gave people a place to hang out, a place to have fun and catch up with each other. The restaurant created a community of its own. Small businesses are very important for any town because they provide that community feeling of friendliness and safety. They're important because they give back to the area and to their people. If I own a business in the future, I hope to achieve that sense of family for my customers and provide for a place where people feel comfortable and wanted.

Throughout my life, I have experienced many setbacks in life, some bigger than others. I've been able to positively redirect from these setbacks, but some of them took a little more time and effort. This instance takes me back to my freshman year of high school when I went out for baseball. I had been playing baseball for 8 years at this point, and already won state championships in my age divisions. I guess you could say that my team and I were pretty good. This baseball group of mine had been playing together for all of these 8 years and we knew everything about each other. We were of very few teams that truly "played as a team". Although, this seemed to change whenever I reached high school. Going into high school we were very excited and ready for what was coming. I had been putting in work all summer, along with my classmates. We had put in endless amounts of hours and work that no other people were doing. I worked closely with a coach and perfected my swing, and was more than ready for the season to begin. Although when it came time for baseball season, none of us saw the field. The only time we played was in actual junior varsity games or if it was a scrimmage on the field. Our team was not good that year, we had barely even won 3 games throughout the season. My classmates and I were furious about not playing. We knew that we were clearly better than the kids starting, so why didn't we start you ask? Well, it was because of the coach. This season, our school hired a new coach for baseball, as the last one retired after 20 years. It was all going to be new for us and the coach. Now my coach never played me, or my classmates for one sole reason-- we were freshmen. "You guys are just too young and inexperienced, to play high school baseball" would say my coach, hundreds and hundreds of times. It didn't matter how many times I asked him about it, he would reply the same, exact way. We really did not see a single second on that field that year. It tested me, to say the least. I had my mind made up that I wasn't going to play baseball ever again, just for the sole reason of a coach, but I knew better. Come next summer, I had a mission. I had a mission to prove my coach wrong. To prove to him that I was the best player on the team and that I had what it took to be a starter, despite my "age and experience". I was in that field almost every day of the summer. My classmates and I joined a traveling team and played ball all summer long. We had gained the experience and skills we needed; we just needed the coach's approval. Baseball season came around and I understood what I had to do. We had 23 kids going out for the team. Seniors being 11 of them. If my coach did the same thing he did last year, then there would be no way for me to start. We practiced the first week of the season and I gave it my all. I mean my all! By the end of the practice, my hands and elbows were bleeding from how much sliding and diving I was doing, just to get the attention of my coach. Our first game came around, but I didn't start. I knew to keep my head up as my coach was watching my every move. I stayed positive and was put in the next inning. I played 6 of the 7 innings that game with a triple, 2 singles, and 4 RBI's. We won that game 14-3. As for my classmates, we all gained starting spots and led our team to one of the better seasons we've ever had. We made it to state with 11 wins and 2 losses. This was one of the biggest times when I faced rejection because of the love of the game I had. It tested my dedication and character as a person. I could have easily given up and walked away from the sport I loved, but instead, I proved a point and redirectred myself.

My role model isn't a singular person, rather an industry comprising of thousands of people and opportunities that have allowed me to blossom as an individual and be a voice for many others in my community. Being from a small town. In fact, having no more than 50 kids in my high school has allowed me to be very involved in my school. I’ve held various leadership roles in multiple clubs inside and outside of school. Of these roles, I’ve found FFA to be the most important to me. This year, I was elected as the District 8 Treasurer and the Chapter Vice President. FFA, Future Farmers of America, is a national organization that aspires to educate young adults about agriculture. There are currently around 760,000 members enrolled and a million more opportunities. I first found an interest in agriculture when I was a young kid where my parents had owned a small ranch and farm. On the farm, I took on various tasks of managing the livestock and helping my father maintain the machinery. Being exposed to agriculture at an early age, not only blossomed my interest in the industry but shaped me into the person I am today. Being a leader is no easy job and the title isn’t given out to just anyone, so when I was elected as the Vice President of my chapter, I took it with the highest degree of respect and responsibility. I was asked by my school to provide my guidance and experience to the underclassmen. Despite being nervous about the role I had taken on, I knew I had to contribute my time, dedication, and my leadership. Holding this position opened me up to more than I could ever imagine, and I found out more about myself and others than I ever had. I had already possessed certain traits of communication, teamwork, and listening, but it only further advanced these skills. When it comes to leadership skills, I progressed tremendously. For my own personal growth, I learned how to become a better leader. I had learned adversity and how to overcome struggling situations; all the while learning to work with others and hearing what they had to say. I learned how to make a positive difference. As a leader, I am looked up to by many. My actions can influence others to follow and I used this to help better my community. This year, I have conducted multiple projects including canned food drives, community gardens, and a recycling program. I showed my leadership by providing insight into situations and exposing the underclassmen to new opportunities. By doing this, I helped members explore something that they really loved and got them involved in it. By holding this position, it has better prepared me for wherever I go in the future. I’ve learned various skills ranging from public speaking to coordinating events that I will be able to use in other careers. This role has provided me with endless opportunities to grow as an individual and to help better my community. As a person, I wish to leave an impact on this world, and I can do so by being involved in leadership roles such as this one.

A picture can tell a thousand stories. I'm a senior at Eads High School. Pictured, I'm wearing a mask. Despite the virus, it's unaware of how it's affected me and other seniors alike. I'm very involved throughout my school in sports and clubs. This virus has limited my senior experience for the sports and people that I love and just living a normal life. However, I've learned to be bold in this situation, making it the best possible. I've learned adversity and adjusting to new situations, to be grateful and fortunate of my situation, and above all, to be BOLD.

Being raised in a small town, in fact, one with less than 50 kids in high school, has allowed for many opportunities for me. My community has given me endless support through school, sports, and many other clubs such as 4-H and FFA. Over the years, I've begun to think of the things that "I" can do for my community since they've given me so many opportunities. One thing that I recently completed was a community garden. A friend of mine and I teamed up and headed the project of this to really benefit our community. This garden provides fresh produce for our community. Being in a dry area, it is difficult to grow a successful garden with little water. This garden has provided locals with plentiful fruits and vegetables. The other added benefits of this project that I headed has allowed the community to really get together and become an even stronger community. Community members are each assigned a plot of the garden where they can plant whatever they want that they desire. This allows for lots of creativity and various amounts of produce. This fall was our second harvest where we hold a huge farmer's market. The produce ranges from loads of legumes, tons of tomatoes, and the craziest cantaloupes! This is a fun way for our community to get their hands dirty and out into nature! I feel that this garden has provided endless amounts of opportunities to the community as it has done the same for me!