~On October 2, 2008~

South Pasadena hosted the Virtual Enterprise Leadership Conference for the Southern California Region. Hundreds of students from all over Southern California attended. This is an annual event that is held with a focus on how to prepare for trade fair competitions. It also aims to help give students the tools they need to be successful in business.

For the second year in a row, Mr. Bob Tyra, Senior Project Director for the Divison of Student Support Service at LACOE, was our keynote speaker. He spoke about the ingenuity of young minds creating solutions and new ideas for the next generation. His primary topic was his unique business plan idea called TIME: Thinking, Innovating, Motivating, and Entrepreneurship. He emphasized that anyone can be the next Bill Gates, all you need is a unique vision and an idea of how you want to deliver your product to the world through smart business practices.

The participants spent the rest of the day expanding their knowledge in the various practices that Mr. Tyra spoke of. Each workshop featured a guest speaker who presented information about various topics varying from public speaking to learning the legal aspects of running a business. Students attended three workshop sessions that were focused on their individual areas of interest. It was a day filled not only with learning, but surprisingly a lot of fun and bonding.

~On November 2nd~

Daylight Savings Time ended. It will start again on March 8th of next year. DST was first proposed in 1907 by an Englishman named William Willett, as a method to reduce the use of artificial lighting in the evening. It has since been the source of much controversy because even though it benefits industries that exploit sunlight such as sporting events, entertainment and agriculture, it has harmed others. When there is extra afternoon daylight, traffic accidents have greatly diminished. However, its affects on crime and health have been negative. It is because of this that daylight savings time is not implemented everywhere. Many countries do not use it as well as some U.S. States.