By Sydney Bartels
A lot of high school students struggle with deciding what career they want to pursue after school. Pathways To Careers is a conference designed to help FFA students gain more knowledge about possible future careers in agriculture. FFA members from all across the state traveled anywhere from ten minutes to up to three and a half hours to gain this experience. Nebraska state officers organized the whole event from the kickoff on Friday night, to the keynote speaker and the professionals on Saturday. P2C kickoff was Friday, November 12, at 7:00 p.m. and included an introduction to the conference, card games, board games, and cornhole, along with a dance at the end. The actual conference geared up the next day at 8:30 a.m. Aaron Davis was the inspirational keynote speaker, who explained the importance of taking advantage of this opportunity because it would be a great learning experience. Next up on the agenda was select-a-session with different professionals in different career paths. Each student chose a different session depending on the career path they were interested in: agribusiness systems, animal systems, environmental and natural resources systems, food products and processing systems, plant systems, and power, structural, and technical systems. There were four session times that students attended. In between sessions, students played mini-games. If they won, they wrote their name on a ticket, for a chance to win a giveaway at the end of the day. After all of the sessions were complete, the students attended a closing, recapping everything they had learned throughout the conference and saying goodbye to all of the new friends that they had made. Silver Lake had 15 students attend the event, and freshman McKenna Pankoke commented, “My favorite part of P2C was being able to step out of my comfort zone and try new things while meeting new friends along the way. I learned new things about plant and animal science that I hadn’t learned before, so it was a great learning experience.”