"What's Your Dream and Passion?"

Where can you find an international gold medalist in track, a dancer of all decade hit songs, and a reporter for CNN all in one act? The 2014 FCCLA Missouri State Leadership Conference of course! Eddie Slowikowski closed the opening ceremonies with what truly was the Greatest Show on Earth. Eddie started his act by telling a story about his dad. This personal story helped him connect to the audience better. He then went on to tell about being fired from multiple jobs as a teen because he hated working 9-5 hours with a boss. His least favorite job that he was fired from was working as a bus boy at a Holiday Inn. He hated it so much he would go hide in the bathroom thinking that nobody knew he was in there, but one busy day the cook ran in and told Eddie they needed him and to stop hiding out in the bathroom. Eddie eventually found out they were aware of his hiding antics since he started. Teenagers in the crowd could relate very well to the job adventures as we have all had our share. Little did anyone know, however, that this would set the stage for what the moral of what this speech would be about. When he was tired of working for someone, he and a friend became entrepreneurs and opened their own business. This business was a handy man type of occupation that focused on odd jobs. He was excited about being able to work when he wanted without a boss and he earned more money this way than at any of his conventional jobs. Now, looking back on his record of jobs, he realizes that you have to be passionate about a job in order to succeed in it. It was in 1979 when he realized “Dreams in Life Sometimes Come True”. It was in this year that his brother was born and he went to his first junior high dance. He attended this dance with his first girlfriend which soon led to his first kiss. That set the stage and opened his eyes to the world of girls. Throughout his life he has realized things about relationships and the way people behave in them. He presented those ideas in an exuberating way which let him connect to the audience on a more interesting and comical level. He kept the audience guessing with his musical abilities and his awesome dance moves he learned as a little kid by replaying a Michael Jackson video over and over until he had it down. Eddie touched hearts with his last story about a little physically challenged kid. Most of the audience was almost in tears by the end of the story. The moral of this story and most of his speech was, “You might have a plan for life but life might have a plan for us.” Life definitely had a plan for Eddie who, by merely substituting for his sick mother at a leadership conference for a high school, discovered his true passion in life. It hit him at the end of the conference, when advisers came up to him and asked him to visit their school because he was so good, that he could be paid for something he loved doing so much. This leads to the tagline of his life, “Each of us can begin to make miracles happen if we believe it." Contributed by McKayla Green, 2014 Media Team Member What’s your dream and passion?”