My name is Asher Becker and I'm a member of the San Carlos Eaton Hills 4H.  I'm in my second year of 4H and am a Junior Team Leader.  This was my first year attending the CAL Conference and I'm very glad I went!  It really furthered my understanding of how 4H works state-wide and gave me so many opportunities to grow in various skills such as public speaking and leading teams.

Cal Conference surprised me in many ways!  I was really shocked to see the number of 4H members attending!  I think it was said that there were over 200 kids.  I guess I hadn't stopped to think about how many clubs are in our county and state.   It gave me a much better understanding of how 4H is organized and how the clubs can interact with each other in many ways (conferences, County Fairs, projects, etc.)

I was impressed at how the entire conference was student led – it was very inspiring.  It was mentioned that planning for this conference began in April.  The planning team thought of so many details!  Sometimes they had to reorganize things quickly when there were minor glitches and they did this with no interruption to the conference – it was hardly noticeable. 

One thing that I liked was being able to make new friends so easily.  I did not know a single boy in my cabin but I felt comfortable right away.  One of my favorite parts of the conference ended up being the cabin skit that we put together.  We were given words that had to be included in our dialogue and were related to the “Greek” theme of the conference.  It was hilarious and so fun interacting with each other and coming up with something so creative.

On Saturday there were five different workshops.  I particularly liked the one on team work which I think will really help me as a JTL and also in many things outside of 4H such as my swim team and church youth group.  They built a structure out of blocks and allowed only one of our group to go look at it for 10 seconds and tell us how it was built so that we could rebuilt it.  It was harder than it seems!

Another speaker taught us how to talk to crowds.  I would like to work on this and make more of an effort to speak in our General Meetings.  I'm also hoping to be more involved in Presentation Day.

I will definitely be going to CAL Conference next year. I would like to inspire more of my own club to come as well!  Thank you for all the people who helped to make it happen.  All your hard work did not go unnoticed. I felt proud to be a 4H member.