By: Mindy Cline, Abby Han, Jack Hensien, Katie Surana, and Erik Sjordal

It was a dark and stormy night, and we were sitting in the dreary, drafty Litton-Reaves auditorium.

Dr.Friedel introduced us to two representatives from the VALOR (Virginia Agricultural Leaders Obtaining Results) organization to teach us about agricultural careers and the importance of making connections with other individuals in the field.

The two speakers were complete opposites: one had dreamed of living on a farm as a child, the other had worked on his family farm since he was five and wanted to get away when he was younger. Each gave their life story and how they began careers in agriculture.Benjamin Grove had worked in poultry as a quality assurance worker for Tyson’s and the farmer, Ian Heatwole, had basically worked on his 1,000-acre family farm his whole life.

A lot of people were interested in the future of agriculture and asked a lot of questions about new methods so Ian told us about his future improvements for his farm, like robotic milking and automatic feeding. People also applied what they had learned in our Biotechnology and Plant science class and asked questions about his planting techniques (conventional, conservation, or no-till methods).

After the detailed lecture about the future of the agricultural industry, we made our way out of the auditorium, and those who had mail went to get their packages, the others started to head back to our dorm only to see that the sky had opened up and it was pouring. Everyone made a mad dash to get back to the dorms, some sacrificing the packages that their families had taken time to send them for the greater good of protection from the rain. The marginal cost of getting their mail wet was not nearly as great as the marginal reward of staying dry.

Naturally, the rain stopped as soon most people returned to the dorm and low and behold the most amazing thing any of us had seen all day appeared from around the corner of a tree top. Not an example of agriculture, education, or really of an importance at all, it was simply generated by sun shining through hundreds of tiny water particles all focusing their light to create a rainbow. All across campus Gov School students stopped whatever they were doing to look upon this totally majestic double rainbow; a gift after a long day.

What “KAI” are you? A few days ago, we took the KAI (Kirton Adaption-Innovation Psychometric Instrument), which measures whether your problem-solving style is more adaptive or more innovative, and today we got to find out what our results were.

An adaptive person solves problems by improving the given solution, while an innovative person solves problems by creating different solutions. The KAI test determines how a person solves problems through a series of questions that gives students scores from a range between 32 to 160. If the student scores higher than 95, he or she tends to solve problems through innovation, whereas if a student scores lower than 95, he or she solves problems through adaptation.

The average KAI score of governor school students was 93, indicating that there was a near balance of adaptors and innovators. Among our five group members, three of us scored higher than 93, while the others scored below 93. It was interesting to see the different scores we got, and we are excited to see how the group is going to cooperate with each other.

BY: Mishal Baig, Dayana Obeldobel, Katie Dunphy, Will Rimer,  Whit Spivey

The most concerning, but exciting, part of a teenager’s life is choosing the right college. It can be especially difficult in Virginia since we have some of the best colleges to pick from. Each college has a different personality and each has stereotypes associated with its name.

It was really helpful to hear about the comparison of these traits (between Tech and UVA) in a professional sense and with a personal twist from the GSLs’ stories during our own version of a College Night. Some main points that were stated were the importance of AP classes and study skills.

I believe every student left that room with new information and a sense of comfort. Even though we were looking forward to going to Radford University for college night, this one was just as helpful!