A demonstration. This student is invented, to show a Washakie County FFA member what a page of their own could look like. The chapter, the degrees, the events, the record book and the rules behind them are real, and every one of them is sourced in the middle column. No real student’s name, photograph or record appears on this page.
What this is
A junior at Worland High School, two years into FFA, running fourteen head of ewes on leased ground. This page is the record of what I have actually done — the degrees, the hours, the events, the service — kept current, in one place, with a card in my pocket that points here.
looking for summer work · lambing, irrigating, harvest · call or text (307) 555-0184
Where the student’s own photograph goes. Drawn, not photographed — this student does not exist.
Below is standard on every GYRO site
More Info
Uncheck anything you would rather not read
A Plain answers
Who are you?
Ruby Calder. Junior at Worland High School, and a member of Chief Washakie FFA, the chapter at the high school here7.
I keep fourteen head of commercial ewes on leased ground east of town. That is my project, and most of what is on this page grew out of it.
This year I am the chapter Reporter, which in FFA is the officer whose job is the chapter newsletter or website, the news releases, and the photographs5. So a page like this one is, more or less, my actual job.
What is an SAE, and what is yours?
SAE stands for Supervised Agricultural Experience. It is the part of agricultural education that happens outside the classroom, and it is the thing FFA is actually built around.
There are two layers2. Every student does a Foundational SAE — career planning, employability skills, personal finance, workplace safety, agricultural literacy. On top of that a student may run an Immersion SAE, which is the real project: ownership, a placement, research, a school enterprise, or service learning.
Mine is an Ownership/Entrepreneurship SAE: the ewes. I bought the first six with money from haying, lease the ground, keep the books, and sell the lambs. Washakie County runs about 28,700 head of sheep, so it is not an unusual thing to be doing here12.
One thing worth knowing if you are reading this to understand FFA. Only the hours and dollars from the Immersion SAE count toward degrees. Foundational SAE work is required of everyone and is genuinely useful, but it does not go in the degree box2. The numbers below are Immersion hours only.
What have you actually done?
This is the part that would otherwise be a blank page. It comes out of my record book, and it is current as of the date at the bottom of this column.
Degrees earned
Degree
When
Conferred by
Discovery FFA Degree
8th grade
the chapter
Greenhand FFA Degree
freshman year
the chapter
Chapter FFA Degree
sophomore year
the chapter
State FFA Degree
applying this year
Wyoming FFA Association
The ladder has five rungs — Discovery, Greenhand, Chapter, State, American — and each one has written requirements, not just a vote1. Wyoming calls the fourth one the State FFA Degree; some states rename theirs, and Wyoming does not8. The fifth is awarded by the national organization, and asks for three consecutive years of records from a project like mine9 — which is the reason to keep the book properly now rather than later.
Where I stand against the State FFA Degree requirements1
Required
Needed
Mine
Months of active membership
24
27
Hours of agricultural instruction
360
382
Earned and productively invested
$1,000
$1,240
… or hours worked beyond class
300
412
FFA activities above chapter level
5
5
Community service hours
25
31
… across separate activities
2
3
These are sample figures for a demonstration. They are set to be internally consistent with the published thresholds rather than copied from any real student’s book.
Events
Livestock Evaluation — Career Development Event, state qualifier, sophomore and junior year4
Agronomy — Career Development Event, district4
Prepared Public Speaking — Leadership Development Event, district4
Parliamentary Procedure — Leadership Development Event, chapter team4
Wool Judging — a Wyoming state event, with no national counterpart8
Office and service
Chapter Reporter, junior year5
Food bank gleaning, fairgrounds clean-up, and the chapter’s grade-school farm safety day — 31 hours across the three
My chapter
Chief Washakie FFA was rated Gold in 2026, which is the top rating Wyoming gives in the National Chapter Award program — a state rating, not a national one67.
What are you looking for?
Summer work, and I am not particular about what kind. Lambing, irrigating, fencing, haying, beet harvest, working corrals, running a swather if somebody will teach me.
I can also do the unglamorous parts: keep a set of books, write things down accurately, and show up at the hour I said I would.
If you are reading this because you got my card, the number is at the top of this page.
What can you actually do?
Lambing and basic sheep husbandry — feeding, docking, vaccination, keeping lambing records.
Hand lines and gated pipe. Not pivots yet.
Fencing: barbed wire and net wire, braces, stretching a fence straight.
Hauling with a gooseneck, and backing one without a crowd.
Keeping the books for a project that has to balance — income, expenses, and what the animals are actually worth.
Speaking to a room without reading off a card, which is what the speaking events are for.
What I cannot do yet is more useful to say: I have no commercial license, I have never run a beet harvester, and I have not welded anything anyone should rely on.
What is FFA, if I have never had anything to do with it?
It is the student organization attached to agricultural education in schools — about a million members nationally, and a little over 4,600 in Wyoming across roughly 64 high school chapters8.
The part most people do not realize is how much of it is written down. Degrees have published hour and dollar thresholds1. There are eighteen Career Development Events and seven Leadership Development Events, with official names and rules4. Chapters are rated against a published standard6. Officers have written duties5.
Which is the whole reason a page like this works. A student in FFA is already generating a documented record. It just normally sits in a record book nobody outside the program ever sees.
Why a web page instead of a résumé?
Because at sixteen a résumé is mostly blank, and the blankness is misleading. I have done a fair amount; it just does not fit the shape of a résumé, which expects job titles and employers.
This page holds the things a résumé has no row for: an SAE, hours against a published threshold, events with placings, service hours, an office with real duties. When I do write a first résumé, it gets written from this, and the hard part — remembering what I did and when — is already done.
It also updates. A résumé handed out in March is wrong by June.
You handed me a card. How does the code on the back work?
Point your phone’s camera at it. Do not open any app first — just the camera, the way you would to take a picture of it. Hold it steady about a hand’s width away.
A link should appear across the top or bottom of the screen. Tap the link. That brings you here.
If nothing happens:
Make sure the whole square is in the picture, including the white border around it.
Try more light, or move so your own shadow is off the card.
Some older phones need the camera app’s own scanner switched on in settings, or a separate QR app.
If your phone is older than about 2017, the camera may not do this at all.
If it still does nothing, the address is printed on the card underneath the square. Type it into any browser. That is why it is printed there — the code is a convenience, not the only way in.
Whose page is this, and what happens when I graduate?
Mine. Not the school’s and not the chapter’s. It can be moved to an address I own, and it can be taken down.
That matters more than it sounds. What is on this page — a student’s name, photograph, participation in a recognized school activity, and the degrees and awards received — is exactly what federal law calls directory information, which a school may release only after giving notice and letting a parent opt out10.
So the rule for a real student’s version of this page is simple: the student and a parent decide, in writing, before it goes up, and either of them can say take it down, at any time, without giving a reason. I could not find a National FFA or Wyoming FFA policy on publishing members’ names and photographs online, and say so rather than implying one exists11.
B Sources
Internal links
The two most recent content changes, and the record behind them.
Every reference to some other website, previewed. The link is always the last line — read the card first and decide whether you need the round-trip distraction of visiting the original at all.
1Program reference · the degree ladder
FFA Degrees
National FFA Organization · reference page, no edition date stated · read 2 October 2026
The five degrees in order — Discovery, Greenhand, Chapter, State, American — with the requirements for each. The Chapter degree asks 180 hours of instruction, an SAE in operation, $150 earned and productively invested or 45 hours worked beyond class, a 15-minute discussion led, five parliamentary procedures demonstrated, three chapter functions above committee level and 10 hours of community service. The State degree asks 24 months of membership, 360 hours of instruction, $1,000 invested or 300 hours worked, five activities above chapter level and 25 hours of service across at least two activities.
Why it is cited: it is the measuring stick the record in column A is set against. Every figure in that table is a threshold from this page, and the student’s numbers are chosen to sit just above them.
Sets out the two tiers. The Foundational SAE, done by every student, covers career exploration and planning, employability skills, personal financial management, workplace safety and agricultural literacy. The Immersion SAE is the project on top of it, in one of five types: placement or internship, ownership or entrepreneurship, research, school-based enterprise, or service learning. It states directly that hours spent on the Foundational SAE outside the context of an Immersion SAE “may not contribute to the attainment of FFA awards or degrees.”
Why it is cited: for that last sentence. It is the constraint that decides whether an involvement record is honest, and the easiest one to get wrong — counting a student’s classwork hours into a degree threshold would be caught immediately by any advisor.
saeforall.org3Record keeping · where the numbers come from
The AET — Agricultural Experience Tracker
theaet.com · privately operated, adopted state by state · platform launched 2007
An online record book for agricultural education: hours, income and expenses, skills journaled, projects, and FFA activity participation. It is the submission vehicle for degree and award applications in the states that have adopted it, and Wyoming is one — Wyoming FFA directs State Star Award applications through it. It is not a National FFA product and no National FFA page designates it the official system; states choose their own.
Why it is cited: because the claim that this page can assemble itself rests on a student already keeping these records somewhere. It is worth being exact that this is the system most chapters use rather than an official one.
theaet.com4Program reference · the events, by their real names
Career Development Events and Leadership Development Events
National FFA Organization · reference listing · read 2 October 2026
Eighteen Career Development Events and seven Leadership Development Events, plus the Agriscience Fair, which is an activity and neither. Livestock Evaluation and Agronomy are CDEs; Prepared Public Speaking and Parliamentary Procedure are LDEs. Several names in common use are not the official ones: the mechanics event is Agricultural Technology and Mechanical Systems, and Agricultural Issues Forum is an LDE rather than a CDE.
Why it is cited: to get the event names right. National FFA’s own main events page merges all twenty-five into one unlabeled list, which is probably why the CDE and LDE split is so often reported wrongly.
National FFA Organization · no date or edition stated in the document · read 2 October 2026
Written duties for each chapter office. The Reporter chairs the public relations committee, plans public information programs with local radio, television and newspapers, releases news to local and regional media, “publishes a chapter newsletter or website,” maintains the chapter scrapbook, sends stories up to district and state reporters, and serves as chapter photographer.
Why it is cited: because the Reporter’s written job already includes keeping a chapter website. The student in this demonstration holds that office, which is not a coincidence — it is the office this whole idea belongs to.
Chapters are judged against the National Quality FFA Chapter Standards and their own Program of Activities across three divisions — Growing Leaders, Building Communities, Strengthening Agriculture — completing at least fifteen activities, one for each of five standards in each division. State ratings run Gold, Silver, Bronze above a baseline Superior certificate. Gold is the top state rating, and gold chapters are the ones eligible to advance to national judging, where the scale changes to three-, two- and one-star.
Why it is cited: so that “Gold” on this page means something specific. It is the highest rating Wyoming awards, and it is not a national award — calling it national recognition would be an overstatement.
2026 Wyoming State FFA Convention: Wyoming FFA members gathered to celebrate accomplishments and elect new leadership
Wyoming Livestock Roundup · 1 May 2026
Reports the 2026 state convention and publishes the list of thirty-two gold-rated chapters, Chief Washakie and Ten Sleep among them. Chief Washakie is the chapter at Worland High School; Ten Sleep FFA is at Ten Sleep High School; both sit in Region 2 of Wyoming FFA’s five regions.
Why it is cited, and the caveat. This is a credible agricultural trade paper, but it is the only source found for the 2026 ratings — Wyoming FFA publishes no historical results list. Before this claim goes on any real student’s page it should be confirmed with the chapter or the association, which costs one telephone call.
Wyoming FFA Association · wyffa.org · read 2 October 2026
Lists the degree ladder as Discovery, Greenhand, Chapter, State and American — Wyoming uses the national name for its state degree rather than renaming it, as Texas and Pennsylvania do. Carries the state’s event offerings, which include Wool Judging and Greenhand Quiz Bowl alongside the national events. The association covers roughly sixty-four high school chapters and more than four thousand six hundred members, with state convention held in Cheyenne in April.
Why it is cited: for the degree name, which is the kind of detail that marks a page as written by somebody who checked. Wool Judging is cited from here too, and labeled a state event, because it has no national counterpart.
American FFA Degree & American Star Award Handbook
National FFA Organization · revised January 2025, for the 2026 award year
The requirements for the highest degree: thirty-six consecutive months of membership, graduation at least twelve months before the convention at which it is granted, 540 hours of secondary instruction, an outstanding SAE with three consecutive years of records, a C average or better, and fifty hours of community service across at least three activities. The financial requirement has three alternative routes, including $10,000 earned with $7,500 productively invested, or $2,000 earned and invested together with 2,250 hours worked beyond class time.
Why it is cited: to show where the ladder goes. A junior with a working project is three years of records away from it, which is the point of keeping the record at all.
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act regulations, U.S. Department of Education · Title 34 last amended 29 September 2026
Defines directory information as information in a student’s education record “that would not generally be considered harmful or an invasion of privacy if disclosed,” and enumerates it: the student’s name, address, telephone listing, electronic mail address, photograph, date and place of birth, major field of study, grade level, enrollment status, dates of attendance, “participation in officially recognized activities and sports,” and “degrees, honors, and awards received.” A school may disclose it only after public notice of what it so designates and a reasonable period for a parent to opt out.
Why it is cited: because it maps onto the contents of this page almost field for field — name, photograph, activities, awards. It is the right authority for the consent rule, and it is federal, current and dated, which no FFA policy on the subject is.
National FFA Organization · effective September 2020
Covers collection of student information — name, address, age, email, telephone, birthdate, grade level, graduation year — states that FFA does not knowingly collect personal information from children under thirteen without a parent or guardian’s consent, and that students, parents and guardians may review what has been collected and request adjustment or deletion at any time. It says nothing about photographs, media releases, or publishing members’ names and achievements online.
Why it is cited: for what is missing from it. Neither National FFA nor Wyoming FFA publishes a policy on putting members’ names and photographs online, so this page cites the law instead and says plainly that it looked and found none.
2022 Census of Agriculture: Washakie County profile
USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service · released 2024 · public domain
206 farms on 368,504 acres, 38,025 of them irrigated. Hay and forage leads by acreage at 20,022 acres, then barley at 6,329 and sugar beets at 5,298. The county runs 35,968 cattle and 28,744 sheep, and livestock brings in 55 percent of its $60.6 million in farm sales.
Why it is cited: the sheep figure. A fourteen-head ewe project is an ordinary thing in a county running nearly twenty-nine thousand head, which is what makes the invented project a plausible one.
Prior know-how is assumed here, and the items become more “technical” toward the bottom. What this replaces, how the record assembles itself, what the printed card is for, and who decides whether a page like this exists at all.
What this replaces
A first résumé is a bad instrument for a sixteen-year-old. It is a form designed to list employment, handed to someone who has not been employed, and the result reads as an absence rather than a beginning.
The absence is false. A student two years into agricultural education has a documented project, hours logged against published thresholds, competitive events with placings, an office with written duties, and service hours recorded by date. That is more documented activity than most adults can produce on demand. It simply has no row on a résumé form.
So this page is not a résumé and does not try to be one. It is the thing a first résumé gets written from, two years later, when there is a job title to put at the top. The hard part of writing that résumé — remembering what happened and when, and finding the numbers — is already done.
How the record assembles itself
The claim that a page like this maintains itself rests on something that is already true: the student is keeping these records anyway, because the degree and award applications demand them.
In Wyoming that record book is The AET, which holds hours, income and expenses, skills journaled, projects and activity participation, and which the state association uses as the application route for its Star awards3. It is a privately operated system adopted state by state rather than a National FFA product, which is worth stating precisely rather than calling it the official record book3.
The involvement block in column A is the shape of what comes out of such a book. Today a student would copy it across at the end of a semester, which takes a few minutes. The interesting version is the one where it is exported rather than retyped, and that is a question for the chapter and the record-book vendor, not for this page.
One constraint governs the whole thing and is easy to get wrong. Only Immersion SAE hours and dollars count toward degrees; Foundational SAE work, which every student does, does not2. A record that totals the two together would overstate a student’s standing and would be caught by the first advisor who read it. The figures in column A are Immersion only.
The card, and why it is called a handbill
The package around this page is about a hundred printed cards. The front carries the student’s name, chapter and telephone number. The back carries a square code pointing here, the address printed underneath it in readable type, and three lines of instruction for someone who has never used one.
Those three lines are the part that matters, and they are usually missing. A code with no fallback is a dead end for the person most likely to be holding the card — an older rancher, at a sale barn, in bad light. So the address is printed, the instructions say what to do when nothing happens, and column A answers it again at length.
The printed address has to be short enough to type, and that turns out to be a real constraint rather than a preference. At a size anybody can read off a card, a path under a shared domain does not fit on one line. So each student wants a short address of their own, which costs about a dozen dollars a year and is theirs when they leave.
The older name for this object is a handbill: a single sheet, printed cheaply, handed to a person, carrying one message. A business card is a handbill that fits in a wallet. What the code adds is that the handbill is no longer fixed at the moment of printing — the card stays the same while what it points at keeps up with the student.
A practical note on printing: the card is designed to work in one color on ordinary stock, and the code is checked to still scan after being forced to pure black and white. A code that reads on a screen and fails on a cheap printer is the standard way this goes wrong.
Who decides whether this page exists
This is the part that has to be settled before a single real student’s page is built, and it is why the demonstration uses an invented student.
What such a page carries is, almost field for field, what federal law enumerates as directory information: a student’s name, photograph, participation in officially recognized activities, and degrees, honors and awards received10. A school may disclose directory information, but only after public notice of what it designates as such and a reasonable period for a parent to opt out — and an opt-out binds the school.
Two things follow. A page built by the school or chapter about a student sits inside that framework and inherits its notice and opt-out machinery. A page built by the student, about themselves, on an address they own, is not a school disclosure at all — but the student is a minor, so a parent is still the right person to agree to it.
Neither National FFA nor Wyoming FFA publishes a policy on putting members’ names and photographs online. That is a real gap rather than a failure to find it, and this page says so rather than implying a policy exists11.
The working rule, then: written agreement from the student and a parent before anything goes up; the page belongs to the student and moves with them; and either of them can have it taken down at any time, without giving a reason and without it being awkward. A page that cannot be taken down easily should not go up.
What it costs
A domain is the only recurring cost, and it is on the order of a dozen dollars a year. The page itself is a handful of plain files with no database, no login and no monthly service behind it, so hosting is free at the sizes involved. The cards are the other cost, and a hundred of them is small.
That is the whole point of the format. A student’s page should not depend on a subscription that lapses the summer after they graduate.
About this page
It is built in the GYRO format: plain answers first, every source previewed in the middle, the detail last. The same handful of files as every other page in this family, and the same behavior — it works on a phone, prints properly, and keeps working with scripting switched off.
The pilot program that would pay for the first dozen pages like this one is proposed at washakie‑ai.online.
What went wrong
The format asks every page to record at least one thing that went wrong. There are three here, and all three were caught in checking rather than drafting.
The state degree had the wrong name. This page was drafted calling it the “Wyoming FFA Degree,” by analogy with states that do rename theirs — the Lone Star Farmer in Texas, the Keystone Degree in Pennsylvania. Wyoming does not. It is the State FFA Degree8. An invented student with an invented degree name would have been spotted by the first advisor who read it.
Two event names were wrong and one was in the wrong category. There is no national event called “Ag Mechanics” — it is Agricultural Technology and Mechanical Systems — and Agricultural Issues Forum is a Leadership Development Event rather than a Career Development Event4. In fairness this is easy to get wrong: National FFA’s own main events page lists all twenty-five events merged together with no labels.
The address would not fit on the card. The first set of card artwork put the full address on one line on the back, and it ran straight off the edge of the card — which was not noticed in the design and was caught only when the artwork was rendered and looked at. It is set on two lines now, and there is a check in the card build that refuses to produce artwork whose text crosses the trim. The useful part is what the failure meant: a path under a shared domain is too long to print at a readable size, which is the argument for each student having a short address of their own.
The chapter’s Gold rating rests on one source. It is a credible trade paper, and it is still one source; the association publishes no historical results7. It is stated here with the caveat attached rather than quietly. On a real student’s page it should be confirmed with the chapter first, which is a single telephone call.
