To her surprise, Maggie Livingston was pleased with a second-place finish last month.
“I told my friends I’ve never been more happy to get second in my life,” the 15-year-old Severance High School sophomore said. “I expected to go in and place high. I assumed I’d be third or fourth.”
Competing in a Colorado FFA speaking contest for the first time in late June, Livingston overcame a lot of waiting, a brief technological hiccup and jitters to finish as the runner up in FFA Creed, which took place online June 30.
“I couldn’t peg any errors with the creed, and once they got into the questions, it was just as good,” Severance High School FFA Advisor and Agricultural Sciences teacher Reece Melton said. “I’m incredibly proud of Maggie.”
Melton and Livingston’s mother, Jenny, were with Maggie at Severance Town Hall for the presentation. Maggie Livingston asked them to step out of the conference room while she performed her speech, though Melton and Jenny Livingston listened through a door.
“It was phenomenal,” Melton said. “The minor things she was woking on, the minor fixes or things she was struggling with, she polished it beautifully.”
Livingston was one of 15 competitors in the FFA Creed contest during which the students recited the 259-word, five-paragraph creed in front of judges and then answered questions about the text.
The contest is usually hosted by Colorado State-Pueblo, but was moved to a remote event during the coronavirus pandemic.
The creed was originally written by Kansas resident E.M.Tiffany in 1928 and officially adopted by the national FFA organization two years later. It’s been revised twice since, and is considered to be a “rite of passage for members,” according to AgDaily.
Livingston now has her eye on other FFA speaking contests, though events remain hold with the pandemic and as schools continue to figure out how such an extracurricular activity might be held.
It’s all hurry up and wait situation. Maybe it will be virtual and maybe not? It’s wait and see
What’s next for Livingston?
She wants to continue with oratory and participating in speaking and speaking competitions within the FFA. The FFA Creed is for freshmen or first-year students. Livingston’s options now are in extemporaneous and prepared speaking. Extemporaneous speaking is an off-the-cuff format, where students are given a subject at a competition. They then have 30 minutes to write their speech before presenting.
In prepared speaking, students write a 5 or 10-minute speech on an agriculture topic and then present it in competition.
Livingston said she’s leaning to focusing on prepared speaking and maybe getting into extemporaneous speaking at another time.
“I just really, really enjoy speaking,” she said. “I feel it’s a way to get my opinion out there. It’s something that makes me happy and I think it can help later in life.”
