In November, I had the opportunity to be a leader at UW’s Basecamp. Basecamp is a program put on by Fraternity and Sorority Life that serves as an orientation for new members of the community. Every leader at Basecamp was expected to give a keynote presentation; my presentation was about time management, and, being a good Ag Ambassador, I used feeding hogs as a metaphor.
In my presentation, I compared the 24 hours you have in a day to a pig trough, how you choose to allocate your time to feed, and everything you have going on in your life (school, clubs, work, friends, family, down time, etc.) to hogs. I used my experience as an example. In my sophomore year, I found myself a member of five organizations on campus, taking 18 credit hours, working part time, and trying to have a social life on top of all that. I was tired, crabby, and overall unhealthy. I had too many hogs at my trough. Some hogs were taking too much feed and getting fat, while others were underfed.
My main point in the presentation was to select the hogs with the best structure and feed efficiency, or select the things in your life that you get the most value out of. You don’t want hogs that are just going to get fat, you want ones that are going to develop the most saleable product for every unit of feed consumed. Likewise, you don’t want to put time into something that you won’t derive any benefit from. I pointed out that Profit=Revenue-Expenses (thank you to every ag econ professor I’ve ever taken for pounding that into my brain), and that sometimes cutting expenses and getting rid of some hogs is better than trying to increase revenues by adding more.
My final point was that just as different hogs require different amounts of feed to put on optimal weight, different things require different amounts of commitment for you to gain any benefit from them. Like a good farmer, it’s your job to determine how much your hogs need.
Going into this school year, I knew that I needed to be a better hog farmer. I picked the two organizations I felt I got the most benefit out of and culled the rest, lightened my credit hour load, and structured my schedule to allow adequate time for school and work. After culling a few hogs and reevaluating my feeding protocol, I am much happier and better off. I closed my presentation with the statement that a few well-fed hogs are better than a lot of underfed ones. Don’t have too many hogs at your trough!
-Wesley Taylor