Recently, the Piedmont Academy (PAC) FFA Chapter held its first FFA meeting of the new year. This meeting was held at the FFA-FCCLA Camp in Covington. The meeting's theme was "The Time is Right for New Beginnings." Piedmont's officers chose this theme because of the new year.

At the meeting, PAC FFA members in attendance wrote their regrets from 2016 on slips of paper and threw them into a bonfire. Then, everyone also wrote their resolutions for 2017 on paper and shared them with the group. Those resolutions, along with others, will be on display on the FFA bulletin board at PAC in order to inspire other students at the school.

FFA members are also working hard to get their proficiency applications ready. Proficiency applications are for a student's supervised agricultural experience (SAE) project.

Each semester, FFA members must complete an SAE project. These applications contain all the information about a member's SAE.

When school starts again after Christmas holidays, FFA members start working on the proficiency applications, so they are ready to submit by the Feb. 1. After the applications are submitted, they are judged by a panel of judges. If a person's application proves to be good enough, they can win awards.

We hope to see many PAC FFA members on stage this year at State Convention receiving awards for all their hard work on their SAE's and proficiency applications.