A Story of Life Changing Experiences in a Young Man's Life

When you think of life changing experiences, you can think of having a near death incident, becoming a parent, becoming a believer or something in those areas. Well in my short life, I haven't really had a life changing experience. But the most recent experience that had an impact in my life was getting my Eagle Scout rank. Through planning, hard work and a little luck, I was able to earn the highest award in the Boy Scouts, Eagle Scout. Before Eagle, you need to start at the beginning, earning the Joiner badge, then moving on up to First Class and later on to Life.

Now getting up to this point for me was easy in some parts and hard in others, but up till now every thing before was child's play because you had parents and adult leaders to help you do a requirement or find a counselor for a merit badge. But now your on you're own and have to find a service project, set it up and some how pull it off so that you can pass it off and get your Eagle book together and earn that rank of Eagle.

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Well I started out finding my project by calling Whittier Parks Department and seeing if they needed anything that I could do for them. What they could find was a big erosion clean up and prevention project, and I don't mean talking to kids about erosion, I mean getting down digging out the side of a hill, and installing 8x8 railroad ties and 10" pipe under the trail before rains come and wash the whole thing away.

So after find the project, I had to find materials, tools, and people to help. Luckily, the Parks Department had the railroad ties and some of the tools, and my troop members were there to help, all for a November 22, 2003 date. So the day of the project comes, everyone is there and we begin by clearing out the hill of debris and start digging a trench in the hill and under the trail, for the ties and pipes will lay in. With the trench dug out, we pile the railroad tiles in four in the middle and two on the sides so that they can channel any rainwater, dirt, or debris can go down, and under the trail, we deposit the pipes so the channeled debris can safely go under the trail and save it from washing out. With project done, I and my fellow scouts look at what we did and find that it is one of the best project that some have seen (I'm not bragging, some of the leader and boys said that), and are glad that they helped and hope and pray that it holds because my part of the project is done, but the area can be improved even more with other Eagle projects.

Now what I had to do after finishing the project was to put together my Eagle book, which is a report of the my project and also all the merit badges, letters of recommendations, future plans... pretty much your whole life as a Boy Scout up to that point and then some. So I have my book and it passed the inspection and I have the hardest and nerve racking, but final thing before saying I'm an Eagle, the Eagle character board. What it is, is a board of three people that have copies of your book and they ask you questions about your experiences in scouting, what you want to do after high school and other things to see if you can represent the Boy Scouts as a Eagle. Well I went in and did my best, and it was enough, because I am an Eagle. Eagles are our national bird; majestic, graceful, and beautiful. And just like them, Eagle scouts are hard to find, but were not as scarce as the bird cause we are here. And looking at that I see that becoming a Eagle is a privilege and an honor knowing that I help others in the community, even if they don't know it, helping the guys in my troop to know that they helped me and the same about the project. And for me, Boy Scouts teach you leadership from the day to join Scouting and also teaches you to start thinking about how on your own, you can do anything. So doing my Eagle project took all those years of teaching and it gave me confidence that I can put together something like my project and carry it out on my own, without or with little help from family and friends, if I just put my time and effort in to my goals.