Vaughn Greason, a 2021 senior, exemplifies leadership and dedication that he will utilize in his life further on. His involvement in Future Farmers of America (FFA) here at Freehold Township Highschool earns him a spot as one of the December Students of the Month. Throughout his interview, he discusses why he joined FFA, the inspiration of his father, and advice he wants to give to all students.

Read full transcript below: 

Emily Landolfi: My first question is what inspired you to join the Future Farmers of America club?  

Vaughn Greason: What originally inspired me to join FFA is that I’ve always worked a lot with botany [the scientific study of plants] and not a lot of the programs around the area had an emphasis on that so when I was in 8th grade I thought, “Wow! This is a good opportunity to do this topic,” and it was. 

EL: Okay, cool! Can you explain a little bit more about that and why it is important to you? 

VG: As of now, something that the FFA has brought to me that I didn’t think it would is that it gave me a lot of opportunities to practice leadership, and it’s just a really good thing all together. It sets you apart when you apply to schools and it gives you kind of experiences with leadership. It gives you a lot of experiences with prepared public speaking or just public speaking in general. It’s very, very good! I also really like the community there. Everybody is really hardworking and motivated, especially having to do with service. 

EL: Cool, cool! Is the community something you would tell people if you were recommending the club to them?

VG: Yes, definitely. 

EL: In general, outside of FFA, who is your biggest inspiration? 

VG: I’d say my biggest inspiration is probably my father. He’s dedicated his life pretty much to service, social justice like he works everyday to make sure that me and my brother live happy lives, so he’s really an enormous inspiration. 

EL: That’s awesome! Do you plan on using the things he’s taught you and advocating for the same things he has in the future?

VG: Absolutely, yeah. 

EL: As a senior, do you have any advice for underclassmen who want to get involved in clubs or even advocate for issues that you were just talking about? 

VG: A large mistake which I made, well I have more advice having to do with clubs, but some advice for the whole volunteering, social justice thing is to always keep in my mind there are an enormous amount of opportunities not just at this school but all over Monmouth County for you to volunteer, to give back to your community all the time. And for clubs? I’d say do as much research on clubs as possible and once you find a club that you really, really enjoy and you feel like you can give a lot to, go for a leadership position there. It is so important just for so many things like you can open the door to amazing opportunities that most underclassmen… I mean I know at least I wasn’t even thinking about a lot of the opportunities that these leaders around me have been able to access because of their motivation to become leaders in these fields. 

EL: That’s really awesome and I’m sure everyone really appreciates your leadership especially in the club and in general, so I think that’s really great! Kind of on the topic we were talking about earlier, are you planning on incorporating skills from FFA and, of course the things your father has taught you, in the future?

VG: Oh, yeah absolutely. Things my dad has taught me are just really, really good and it’s always motivating and I’ll always carry in that sort of tribe that he’s instilled in me. And for the FFA, something I’ll always keep in mind from them is that you always have to be prepared like if somebody gives you a task, you need to do as much as possible in order to make sure you do that task as well as you possibly can. I know to be prepared for lots of things like whatever someone gives me, I go the extra mile, essentially.

EL: Do you recommend any methods that you’ve used to go that extra mile?

VG: Something I’ve always, so specifically for presentation, something that people tend not to do which tends to help you a lot with presenting things is that you write a script on top of the presentation just for the slides that you are going to present. While the slides themselves should be pretty sparse and easy to look at, your script should really go in depth. That’s the first thing that jumps to mind that I learned from the FFA. 

EL: Do you have any other tips or suggestions or even thank you’s you want to give out since I know it’s your senior year and times are crazy, so any words of encouragement for all grades? 

VG: Essentially, advice that I would give to people that have worked for me is to take advantage of things like office hours, you know? Because they didn’t have that before and it’s more accessible than it has been for like most of the years. As long as you keep in contact with your teachers, you can see massive improvement in your grades, at least I have!