An inspirational slogan?

I expect to resume blogging this week, after my brief hiatus. I've been thinking through a few large topics I would like to get down on 'paper', but I'm still not sure how to say what I'm thinking. Probably because I'm not entirely sure what I'm thinking yet.

Just a quick note for now: Last week, I went with a couple of my children on a road trip to see three of the five Great Lakes. We live near Lake Ontario, so we've already seen that one, and Lake Superior is too far away and too minyan-less, so we made this a trip for Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and Lake Erie.

At some point while driving near the Indiana/Michigan border, we saw a billboard for Ferris State University. I'm sorry I didn't pull over for a picture, but I thought I could find one on-line, and now it seems I cannot. But the billboard offered this slogan: "You're ahead of the person behind you... Stay there."

That just seemed so absurdly wrong, in so many ways. To count off a few:
* Is that really a goal in life - to stay ahead of the guy behind us?
* Should this be the reason we learn, and attend an institution of higher learning?
* Is attending your university the best way for me to accomplish that goal?
* What do you do on campus to inculcate that goal into your students?
* How will you help me accomplish that goal?


I wonder if that billboard was the inspiration behind this April Fools prank by Ferris State students...