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One of the things that a lot of farm kids came to NC State with,

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and other schools as well, but one of the things that we had learned a lot about in high school

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is leadership.

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I was a strong, big Future Farmers of American member when I was at South Edgecombe, my high school,

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I met a lot of kids across North Carolina through FFA, including Governor Hunt,

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so when I came to NC State

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there were a bunch of ag folks, like me,

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who had grown up in that environment of FFA as we were leaving high school and getting into our college experience

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so we kind of gravitated to each other.

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In fact we kid Governor Hunt about it. He had a machine long before he became a politician in state government.

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He had a machine at NC State so a lot of us who had been in FFA were recruited into the Governor Hunt machine when he was at NC State. [Laughs]

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So I got very involved early on in things like student orientation.

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As a sophomore I ran the student orientation program for incoming freshmen,

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but I did that as a result of being asked to do that by people that I had known in FFA who were in leadership positions at NC State.

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So I got very involved early on and it just became a way of life. I enjoyed it, I enjoy that, I still enjoy being involved in policy making,

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which is kind of what those jobs did,

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and so not only did I run the student orientation program as a sophomore

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but I also got involved in the student senate.

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Another really good friend of mine, a guy named Charlie Russell

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who was in the college of agricultural, he was in ag education at the time,

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Charlie had to go out and do his student teaching and so as a student senator I took over as vice president of the student government while he was out doing his student teaching.

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He was student body vice president

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and I took over for him and ran the student senate while he was out,

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and that kind of led me into other things that I did as a student.