BV’s Jessica Harsh focused on her future

Jes­sica Harsh

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Jes­sica Harsh has essen­tially been work­ing toward her future since she was six years old.

It was then that the Buck­eye Val­ley senior was watch­ing uncles and cousins show their Angus cat­tle at the state fair. It was also then that she knew she wanted to do the same thing, she said. By the age of 8, she too was show­ing cattle.

Years have passed since that first show and now Jes­sica hopes to attend either Pur­due or Ohio State uni­ver­si­ties to major in ani­mal sci­ence and ag com­mu­ni­ca­tion. She is also con­sid­er­ing pur­su­ing a master’s degree in ani­mal nutrition.

“I’m look­ing hard at Pur­due. They have a pretty cam­pus plus there have been improve­ments to the ag pro­gram,” she said.

“Jessica’s strong agri­cul­tural back­ground acquired from grow­ing up on a fam­ily farm and rais­ing show cat­tle, her aca­d­e­mic dili­gence and her drive for excel­lence will help her to secure a bright future in an ani­mal sci­ence career field,” said Jamie Gre­gory, the agri­cul­tural edu­ca­tor and FFA advi­sor at Buck­eye Valley.

Nowa­days, the show cir­cuit for Jes­sica starts Thanks­giv­ing week­end and con­tin­ues until the first week­end in April. Show­ing as far away as Kansas, this year the big show will be in Louisville in Novem­ber. Then, when the sea­son is over, it will be time to focus on get­ting steers ready for the state fair.

Jes­sica works closely with her brother Cur­tis who also shows cattle.

“We’re kind of like each other’s right hand man,” she said.

After grad­u­a­tion from Buck­eye Val­ley, Jes­sica said she will still be involved with show­ing. As one of the board of direc­tors for the National Junior Chi­an­ina Asso­ci­a­tion (Jes­sica shows a cross breed of Chi­an­ina cat­tle), she will still be involved trav­el­ing and help­ing out with shows.

Back home as a senior at Buck­eye Val­ley, she is excited to see the ren­o­va­tions to the high school com­pleted, and even though as a senior she will not have as much time to appre­ci­ate them, she is pleased the improve­ments will ben­e­fit future BV stu­dents. With many friends in the class that grad­u­ated last year, Jes­sica said it was tough for her when all the seniors left last year. But on the first day of school the real­iza­tion hit her — “we’re the seniors now,” she said. 

She is ready to grad­u­ate and get on with her life. With mov­ing in between two cir­cles of friends — those at high school and those she’s met cat­tle show­ing — she said she has learned to just be her­self. “Do not try to change your per­son­al­ity. You’ll get more respect,” she said. 

She real­izes that it may be more dif­fi­cult to stay in touch with her school friends, whereas she expects she will still be see­ing the friends she has from show­ing cattle.

As pres­i­dent of FFA, Jes­sica decided to use her lead­er­ship skills to focus on that group this year. “There ara a lot good oppor­tu­ni­ties in the pro­gram for lead­er­ship,” she said, adding there are about 30 incom­ing fresh­man this year who she can help to develop career and lead­er­ship skills.

In 4-H for the past eight years, and hold­ing offi­cer posi­tions for the last seven years, Jes­sica also vol­un­teers through 4-H, help­ing with the base­ball fields in Rad­nor and con­duct­ing other vol­un­teer activ­i­ties as a mem­ber of the junior fair board. She also vol­un­teers for a can­cer fundraiser through her soft­ball team.

Jes­sica and her fam­ily also par­tic­i­pate in walks for dia­betes. Jes­sica has Type I diabetes.

“I do not see it as a mis­for­tune,” she said. “It’s some­thing to build life on. It’s helped me become a bet­ter person.”

“Jes­sica Harsh is exactly the type of stu­dent who any teacher would want to have in their class,” Gre­gory said. “Not only does Jes­sica excel in the class­room, but she has also been very active in our local FFA chap­ter and is cur­rently serv­ing as our Buck­eye Val­ley DACC FFA chap­ter pres­i­dent. Upon enter­ing her senior year in high school she has already earned the Ohio FFA State Degree, applied for FFA Beef Pro­duc­tion Pro­fi­ciency Awards, and has been rec­og­nized sev­eral times as a star mem­ber in our FFA chap­ter. She con­stantly sets high expec­ta­tions for her­self and our FFA chap­ter, which has made her a great role model for the other FFA members.”

Buck­eye Val­ley social stud­ies teacher Maria Velalis has had Jes­sica as a stu­dent for sev­eral years. She said, “Jes­sica is a won­der­ful stu­dent (who) demon­strates her pri­or­ity in plac­ing high stan­dards for her­self in edu­ca­tion by con­sis­tently receiv­ing excel­lent grades.”

Jes­sica was inducted into National Honor Soci­ety last spring and has been a scholar ath­lete for three years.

Velalis said, “Jes­sica is a very con­sci­en­tious and self-motivated indi­vid­ual. She is always polite, respect­ful, hon­est and will­ing to help other stu­dents and teach­ers when in need. Jes­sica strives to make a dif­fer­ence at Buck­eye Val­ley by using her lead­er­ship skills as Pres­i­dent of the FFA Chap­ter. She has been involved in Var­sity Soft­ball for three years of her high school career and always shows a pos­i­tive atti­tude as well as school spirit. She has given many hours of com­mu­nity ser­vice to her school and her com­mu­nity. Jes­sica is truly an asset to Buck­eye Val­ley and the stu­dent body. I believe Jes­sica will make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in her future endeavors.”

With her ties around the coun­try, Jes­sica said she could relo­cate a num­ber of places once she attains her col­lege degree.

“But I’m hop­ing to stay rea­son­ably close to home,” she said.

Jes­sica is the daugh­ter of David and Michele Harsh of Radnor.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Oct 8 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.