Busy! Gosh. I am a week behind on my blogs, so I'm going to try to find some kind of convenient connection between last week's and this week's speakers, which is going to be really amazing since this will involve linking commercial farming to the risky decisions of a good business leader.
I never realized how much writing college entailed. I finished three papers in the past three days, and the really sick part is that I enjoyed it. Also, I got roped into re-writing lyrics for the Honors Step Sing group my room mate is starting. Of course, when I agreed, I didn't realize that I had to take six to ten popular songs, theme it towards "nerdy fairy tales" and have it done by the end of this weekend, which is two days before our first real school break.
Which is in five days! I'm leaving this wonderful intstitution Tuesday at noon-thirty, and I'm not going to pretend that Thanksgiving isn't my favorite holiday and I'm not totally excited. Anyway! Last night we wrote a couple verses together, which was really fun. Also I'm writing another article for the Flor-Ala, and there's no meeting this Monday, which means I have an extra week to get it done. This will be my first article for the Life section, and hopefully the first one that isn't in some way screwed up when it goes to print. It's going to be about personal Christmas stories and I'm excited to talk to some more people about it, especially professors.
And now I'm going to write about forum! YAY. But first! I'm going to get on Facebook for a few minutes and then head to Business Computer Apps class. I will be back in a little over an hour to pour out the rest of my soul to you.
JK. It's tomorrow. After class, I had work, and after that I had math homework, and then I had the Breaking Dawn premier, which was half-way decent so naturally I am MAJORLY impressed and infatuated with the film in its entirety. A friend and I discussed last night how if the terrorists wanted to wipe out a third of our population, they should just target our theatres at midnight during the Twilight premiers - job done. Also, as my Facebook status implies, it is truly symbolic of American opportunity that Taylor Lautner gets to play a Native American just because he's tan.
In other news, farming. We live in a really great area for cotton. Now, our Novembers may be climatically spastic, but they are dependably warmer than, say, Kentucky's Novembers. The Tennessee Valley is basically as far north as you can go before hitting areas where cotton simply can't thrive because it needs a long growing season. Something interesting I picked up from row crop farm micromanager Mr. William Lee was how no matter what career field (pun) you choose, education will only enhance your experience. He said, "I wouldn't enjoy what I do had I not gotten an education."
I went to a high school where farmer kids abounded, and from among the highly intelligent and ambitious farmer kids, my eyes were opened to the stores of knowledge, strategy, and risk involved in farming. Entrepreneurship often comes hand-in-hand with farming. Mr. Lee told us that there are many approaches a person can take to pursuing agriculture. He said if he hadn't chosen to be a hands-on farm manager, he would have chosen to be a researcher, because there is indeed much to be learned to better the process. Some other farm managers he sees are never wearing anything less than suits and ties, hiring men to do the work on the land they happened to own, but Mr. Lee prefers not to ask a man to do work he wouldn't do himself.
Getting dirty isn't chump's work. It's not like corn and cotton farming is some kind of primitive activity where your hands bleed and you go blind from all the cans of pesticide you personally spray all the day long. There were days, he said, when much of the work was basically like working 3,000 acres on a lawn mower and it was very tiring; but now there is GPS programming and autosteering. He even made his own innovative soil sampler vehicle which, from the picture he showed us, doesn't even look hillbilly. Farming is much more technologically involved than I thought. These days farming is highly mechanized, and there isn't much manual labor going on, plus that big sprayer tractor thing looks FUN. To add to that, farming kind of reminds me of the Bible. I think it is a very beautiful, honest way of earning money. Like most careers, it takes commitment, confidence, and know-how. If you want to succeed, you had better know what you're talking about, and you had better be willing to take some risks.
While farming is unique in its culmination taking place only once a year, everything depending on that one crop to last you till the next year, "city business" involves risks of its own. UNA Trustee Stephen Pierce is the kind of guy who is not afraid to have a vision and make unpopular decisions. And that, friends, is the sign of a quality leader. He helped make the decision to bring our live lion mascots, today Leo III and Una, onto campus. Apparently people despised that idea at first (WHY?!), but guess what? He did it anyway, and not only has UNA not lost one penny from this huge installment, but the school's morale, quality and desirability had increased sevenfold. (I just made up that statistic.) Admittedly, I don't think I have visited the exhibit once since I've lived here, but so what? What do you think helped lure me to this place to begin with? The endless mountainous staircases and cute dorm fridges? Well, actually, I was inordinately pumped about the micro-fridge, but still, it's attractive to think there will one day be 500-pound cats lounging around under a waterfall across from your English building.
The list of changes he has made around here goes on and on - walkways, hotels - the school's coming change to Division I. He just wants us to be even prouder of our UNA after we graduated than when we actually attended it. That takes either a committed leader or an adrenaline junkie.
Now on to stuff I care about. Mr. Pierce told us that college is a unique time in our lives, in that it "insulates" us from areas in the career world that are struggling. He also pointed out how pivotal these years of our lives are, and I'm going to be honest, when I think about it, it makes my stomach feel all weird. Listen to this nine-year period of his life that he revealed to us starting the day he graduated from high school: He met the woman he would marry, graduated from college, married her, started his life work, and had a son and daughter. Now, I am going to be nineteen years old in two weeks, and chances are, you are either in my boat or rowing a few oar-lengths away. Think about where you were when you were ten years old, and how much your life has changed in the nine years since then. When I do that, everything I know about life is just chucked into the depths.
Life does not last forever. Things change fast, and I'm not just talking about puberty. You meet people who somehow become part of your heart, come across opportunities that mold your coming years into something you thought you'd never even touch, and learn things that pull you over walls and into new places, some from which you may never look back. Chances are, everything is going to change in just nine years' time.
So what can we do? From time to time over the past few months, I will be sitting with a group of girls and we will get to talking about our majors and whether we will change them, or if we'll ever really decide what we want to do... If we talk about it long enough our eyes will start getting wider and our hair will get a little frizzier as we let the pressure and panic escalate into "I guess we'd better hurry up and get married before it's too late!" mode. This really happens. I have truly never thought about this stuff before now and it was scary at first, but now it's mostly just exciting. It's like a challenge that you have to rise to and yet can't really fail. I know a girl who stopped school for a year just to work and make money, and she's so glad she did it. My English Composition professor didn't start having children until she was thirty, and she is such a proud, devoted mother and one of the the best, most ambitious teachers I have ever had. There are no rules to break or time limits to meet. If I want to quit school for a year and take off to France or Africa, I can. If you want to wait until you're twenty-eight to even think about getting married, you will totally not be thrown in prison.
Here's to breaking rules that were never made.
"I'll sing alone the whole day through... Just do your best to hear me, it's all you can do." - Copeland
I never realized how much writing college entailed. I finished three papers in the past three days, and the really sick part is that I enjoyed it. Also, I got roped into re-writing lyrics for the Honors Step Sing group my room mate is starting. Of course, when I agreed, I didn't realize that I had to take six to ten popular songs, theme it towards "nerdy fairy tales" and have it done by the end of this weekend, which is two days before our first real school break.
Which is in five days! I'm leaving this wonderful intstitution Tuesday at noon-thirty, and I'm not going to pretend that Thanksgiving isn't my favorite holiday and I'm not totally excited. Anyway! Last night we wrote a couple verses together, which was really fun. Also I'm writing another article for the Flor-Ala, and there's no meeting this Monday, which means I have an extra week to get it done. This will be my first article for the Life section, and hopefully the first one that isn't in some way screwed up when it goes to print. It's going to be about personal Christmas stories and I'm excited to talk to some more people about it, especially professors.
And now I'm going to write about forum! YAY. But first! I'm going to get on Facebook for a few minutes and then head to Business Computer Apps class. I will be back in a little over an hour to pour out the rest of my soul to you.
JK. It's tomorrow. After class, I had work, and after that I had math homework, and then I had the Breaking Dawn premier, which was half-way decent so naturally I am MAJORLY impressed and infatuated with the film in its entirety. A friend and I discussed last night how if the terrorists wanted to wipe out a third of our population, they should just target our theatres at midnight during the Twilight premiers - job done. Also, as my Facebook status implies, it is truly symbolic of American opportunity that Taylor Lautner gets to play a Native American just because he's tan.
In other news, farming. We live in a really great area for cotton. Now, our Novembers may be climatically spastic, but they are dependably warmer than, say, Kentucky's Novembers. The Tennessee Valley is basically as far north as you can go before hitting areas where cotton simply can't thrive because it needs a long growing season. Something interesting I picked up from row crop farm micromanager Mr. William Lee was how no matter what career field (pun) you choose, education will only enhance your experience. He said, "I wouldn't enjoy what I do had I not gotten an education."
I went to a high school where farmer kids abounded, and from among the highly intelligent and ambitious farmer kids, my eyes were opened to the stores of knowledge, strategy, and risk involved in farming. Entrepreneurship often comes hand-in-hand with farming. Mr. Lee told us that there are many approaches a person can take to pursuing agriculture. He said if he hadn't chosen to be a hands-on farm manager, he would have chosen to be a researcher, because there is indeed much to be learned to better the process. Some other farm managers he sees are never wearing anything less than suits and ties, hiring men to do the work on the land they happened to own, but Mr. Lee prefers not to ask a man to do work he wouldn't do himself.
Getting dirty isn't chump's work. It's not like corn and cotton farming is some kind of primitive activity where your hands bleed and you go blind from all the cans of pesticide you personally spray all the day long. There were days, he said, when much of the work was basically like working 3,000 acres on a lawn mower and it was very tiring; but now there is GPS programming and autosteering. He even made his own innovative soil sampler vehicle which, from the picture he showed us, doesn't even look hillbilly. Farming is much more technologically involved than I thought. These days farming is highly mechanized, and there isn't much manual labor going on, plus that big sprayer tractor thing looks FUN. To add to that, farming kind of reminds me of the Bible. I think it is a very beautiful, honest way of earning money. Like most careers, it takes commitment, confidence, and know-how. If you want to succeed, you had better know what you're talking about, and you had better be willing to take some risks.
While farming is unique in its culmination taking place only once a year, everything depending on that one crop to last you till the next year, "city business" involves risks of its own. UNA Trustee Stephen Pierce is the kind of guy who is not afraid to have a vision and make unpopular decisions. And that, friends, is the sign of a quality leader. He helped make the decision to bring our live lion mascots, today Leo III and Una, onto campus. Apparently people despised that idea at first (WHY?!), but guess what? He did it anyway, and not only has UNA not lost one penny from this huge installment, but the school's morale, quality and desirability had increased sevenfold. (I just made up that statistic.) Admittedly, I don't think I have visited the exhibit once since I've lived here, but so what? What do you think helped lure me to this place to begin with? The endless mountainous staircases and cute dorm fridges? Well, actually, I was inordinately pumped about the micro-fridge, but still, it's attractive to think there will one day be 500-pound cats lounging around under a waterfall across from your English building.
The list of changes he has made around here goes on and on - walkways, hotels - the school's coming change to Division I. He just wants us to be even prouder of our UNA after we graduated than when we actually attended it. That takes either a committed leader or an adrenaline junkie.
Now on to stuff I care about. Mr. Pierce told us that college is a unique time in our lives, in that it "insulates" us from areas in the career world that are struggling. He also pointed out how pivotal these years of our lives are, and I'm going to be honest, when I think about it, it makes my stomach feel all weird. Listen to this nine-year period of his life that he revealed to us starting the day he graduated from high school: He met the woman he would marry, graduated from college, married her, started his life work, and had a son and daughter. Now, I am going to be nineteen years old in two weeks, and chances are, you are either in my boat or rowing a few oar-lengths away. Think about where you were when you were ten years old, and how much your life has changed in the nine years since then. When I do that, everything I know about life is just chucked into the depths.
Life does not last forever. Things change fast, and I'm not just talking about puberty. You meet people who somehow become part of your heart, come across opportunities that mold your coming years into something you thought you'd never even touch, and learn things that pull you over walls and into new places, some from which you may never look back. Chances are, everything is going to change in just nine years' time.
So what can we do? From time to time over the past few months, I will be sitting with a group of girls and we will get to talking about our majors and whether we will change them, or if we'll ever really decide what we want to do... If we talk about it long enough our eyes will start getting wider and our hair will get a little frizzier as we let the pressure and panic escalate into "I guess we'd better hurry up and get married before it's too late!" mode. This really happens. I have truly never thought about this stuff before now and it was scary at first, but now it's mostly just exciting. It's like a challenge that you have to rise to and yet can't really fail. I know a girl who stopped school for a year just to work and make money, and she's so glad she did it. My English Composition professor didn't start having children until she was thirty, and she is such a proud, devoted mother and one of the the best, most ambitious teachers I have ever had. There are no rules to break or time limits to meet. If I want to quit school for a year and take off to France or Africa, I can. If you want to wait until you're twenty-eight to even think about getting married, you will totally not be thrown in prison.
Here's to breaking rules that were never made.
"I'll sing alone the whole day through... Just do your best to hear me, it's all you can do." - Copeland
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