FFA

Many years ago, I worked with a lady who had been a principal in a small community in Oklahoma.  Anybody who has ever attended public school knows that hats are something school officials usually forbid students to wear.  My co-worker was no different.  When she went to that small Oklahoma community, she didn’t want the students wearing hats in the school.  What she found out, and in a hurry, was that the main employer in that community made those hats.  Everybody wore hats.  Eventually, so did she.  And that shouldn’t come as a surprise.  School attitudes, including rules of student conduct, are almost always tempered with the reality of the community that school is in.

With that in mind, recently I was driving through a small, rural community in Oregon.  That community has an FFA (as do many).  The main crop grown in that part of the country is grapes.  Wine grapes.  And it is highly possible that in other communities the main agricultural product is marijuana.  I’m not certain if DARE programs are that prominent anywhere anymore (and they really shouldn’t be, because there is no real evidence they do anything).  However, can you imagine the message school officials would need to give on drinking in a community whose main income comes from alcohol?  Can you imagine the DARE message in a community where the marijuana industry is a main employer?  Would they even bother?  And here’s an even more interesting question:  Would the kids be better off, or worse off, if they didn’t?

Documentation Examples

So you’re writing a research paper and you come across something you want to use in your paper, but you don’t know how to cite it, such as a work with an Editor, or perhaps it’s a Translation.  Fear not!  There are examples for how to do both in the Documentation folder (which is inside of the College Courses tab to your left, or you can cheat and use the previous hyperlinks).  In addition, there are documentation examples for Movies and Personal Interviews, as well as lots of other exciting reading.  If you don’t find an example there of what you need, just ask your instructor.  

A Once in a Lifetime Opportunity!

This is can be a very misleading cliché, because there truly are opportunities you will never have again in your lifetime.  Going out with Mary Ann Joblonski was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and it’s never going to happen again.  Even if I went out with her the first time, and she’s willing to go out with me again, the first time is only going to happen once.  And that’s because everything is a once in a lifetime opportunity.  That’s why companies can advertise that their sale is a “once in a lifetime opportunity!”  Even if they put the exact same thing on sale again next week for the exact same price, it’s still the only opportunity you’re ever going to have to buy it for that price right now.  And you wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?