Let it snow ...

Hey blog readers! I actually have some time to update because I am stuck in my flat due to snow. It really did not snow all that much -- maybe three inches? But this is southeastern Virginia. People here do not take kindly to driving in the snow. Therefore, yesterday we had a snow day and today we're basically having an ice day.

One of my grandmothers had the unique role of being the one who would call off school at her school district in New Jersey. I've been thinking about what I would do if I were the one in that position. After all, my current plans are definitely to stay in the classroom, but there may be a day when I am called to administration as well. The best administrators are those who used to be in the classroom.

Obviously, the best reason to call off school is student safety. This is why we did not have school today -- some of the roads in the county are too icy for a school bus to get through. The one downside to this is that different parts of the county often see different amounts of snow. The students in my neighborhood probably could have gone to school without any problems. This is especially a problem in the county where I am from in Northern Virginia. There are more than twenty high schools in the county, so it totals to more than 100 schools total. Some parts of the county are your typical suburban concrete jungle, but other parts are still more off the beaten path. This can lead to administrators feeling that it might be okay to continue with school, but then finding that it was not such a good idea.

Example: my senior year of high school we had two potential snow days within two weeks. I say "potential" because one of them turned out to be a rain day. This day came first and the county was apprehensive about student safety so they called school off, like I would have, and it ended up only raining. The administrators were kicking themselves and the students were delighted. They decided that they weren't going to make the same mistake the following week and the snow and ice were terrible on the way to school. It actually took me an hour and a half to get there, and I was still one of the first students to arrive.

Which leads into a second issue: administrators only have a set number of snow days. Schools have to make them up after a certain point, so in an effort to keep breaks and avoid tacking days onto the end of the school year, administrators may decide not to give a snow day when it appears that it may not snow. This creates a situation like I just described. When I was a junior in high school we had so many snow days that they actually had to tack a half hour on to each school day after spring break in order to make up the time.

The bottom line: snow is awesome, but students have to stay safe and schools have to meet standards. Like many other issues in public school, snow days mean that schools have to seek a balance. Personally, I'm glad that I've had a little time to catch up on everything, but it will be great to see my students tomorrow.

Irrational Exuberance

Apparently I have been out of the loop in terms of keeping up with other Web-savvy people. I had never heard of the Vlogbrothers until two weeks ago. The Vlogbrothers are John and Hank Green, two guys who set out in 2007 to communicate without text for an entire year ... that means: no IM, no email, and definitely no blogging. What was left? Well, the phone, and YouTube! John and Hank decided to post a YouTube video to one another on their own YouTube channel for an entire year. Somewhere around June or July 2007 they became insanely popular and have continued to post these videos, even though the challenge is over.

I happened upon them due to a podcast that I listen to. This was the first video that I watched of theirs, about the new economic stimulus bill. Regardless of how you feel about the bill, the video is definitely worth watching. My favorite quote, as suggested in the title of this blog, is "...irrational exuberance, which is my favorite kind of exuberance!"



*Note* apparently the video goes into periods of not working for a time. I have observed this happening, too, and have noticed that it usually resets itself within an hour or so. :)

Happiness is just a Coke away

First blog post of the new year, and first post after reemerging from finals and then break. It's been a good two months consisting of, among other things, quite a few papers, pleasure reading, movies, cuddling with my dog, and two trips: Lexington and Atlanta.

I had the pleasure of visiting the World of Coke with my friends Rachel, Taylor, and Joseph while in Atlanta. Druggist John Pemberton invented the formula for Coca-Cola in Atlanta in the 1880s, during the era of soda fountains. Pemberton wanted to create something unique that was unlike anything else in the soda market. Like soda fountains today, soda was served by combining a syrup with carbonated water ... pretty cheap ingredients. The key, of course, is marketing. Pemberton got a good publicist, and made some quality publicity decisions himself, ensuring that Coke retained a good reputation into the 20th century.

More than a museum devoted to a mix of syrup and water, the World of Coke is a museum devoted to advertising. All visitors see a silly movie (with no real point other than silliness) at the beginning of the visit and are then free to explore different aspects of the museum (a two-level lobby with about eight small rooms leading off of it) at their own pace. You can take a picture with the Coca Cola polar bear, watch another film (this time in 3D ... er, 4D, because it appeals to your other senses as well), listen to Coca Cola "success" stories about how Coke changed people's lives, learn about the bottling process, and watch Coca Cola ads, among other things. The whole tour culminates in the tasting room where you can taste more than 80 Coke products from around the world ... did you know that Coca Cola produces Smart Water and Odwalla? Neither did I. Coca Cola is also an official sponsor of the Olympic Games and has more than 50 Olympic pins. There is also a ridiculous amount of art devoted to Coke.

The point is, this advertising works, and Coke is completely honest about it. They say more than once on the tour that the success of their product has a lot to do with their marketing and much less to do with the product itself (though they do cite that it's success comes from universal design, universal quality, and universal availability). They are good at it. I'm really not much of a Coke fan myself, I prefer lighter sodas like Sprite (also a Coke product) but by the end of the tour I was ready to drink a whole class of the syrupy goodness. Luckily, there was plenty of Coke for me in the tasting room and they gave me a free Coke in a bottle on my way out.

My friends and I were joking for the rest of my visit that happiness was just a Coke away, but isn't that exactly what the consumer culture wants us to think? That's why we have advertising in the first place. Coke, and other companies, succeed because they can convince us that their product will bring us just a little more happiness than we had a minute before. It may not be lasting joy, but it's good for the moment.

The best part of the museum for me was being able to examine Coke's marketing strategies and figure out what it is about them that draws me to drink something that I don't even really like. The answer? I like the little animated penguins in the polar bear commercials. I also like that Coke commercials emphasize general happiness.

And never fear ... unless you live in Cuba or Myanmar, you'll always have Coke within reach.