Back to School

Back to School By Pete Mihalek

So, I had a plan. I wanted my last column of 2012 to focus on the unfortunate art many of us have perfected — procrastination.

I actually wanted to use this time to declare my New Year’s resolution — to stop procrastinating — well ahead of schedule. See that, I was going to be proactive.

Then I got distracted.

While producing this month’s issue, I couldn’t help but notice in three different articles, that three different people coincidentally commented on how beneficial area colleges can be to garden centers — whether for aid in marketing, product design, managerial practices, etc.

classroom guinea pig

I won’t give away the issue, but I will share one example. Wheatfield Nursery, which is in pretty close proximity to Penn State University (PSU), is now in its third year as a retail nursery. It made its first attempt at hosting an event a couple years ago by way of the Proven Winners Pink Day for the Breast Cancer Research Fund.

In the article “Planning in Pink” on page 12, Wheatfield’s promotional manager Melissa Cramer says she hopes to see the Pink Day event grow with each passing year.

Here’s how she expects to make that happen:

For starters, she’s already started planning for next year’s mid-summer event. But what’s more impressive is who’s helping her with the planning.

Thanks to the contact she still keeps with a former college professor at PSU, creating an advertising plan for Wheatfield Nursery’s next Pink Day event is currently part of the curriculum for a horticultural marketing class at the university.

“Having about 30 more creative minds will hopefully help,” Melissa says.

put the pride aside

I know some of you are thinking: “I’m not going to take advice from a bunch of students” and “I’ve been doing this for X amount of years. What are they going to tell me that I don’t already know?”

Give me a break.

Think about it. Like the local news, college professors and their students want to cover topics and projects that are interesting and provide a valuable experience.

Believe it or not, your setbacks and head scratching can be the perfect real-life, hands-on project your local college students need.

The solutions you require are out there. You might just have to go back to school to find them. And like Melissa said, there are worse things than having a class of young and eager minds working to help you. Right?

As for that column on procrastination I initially planned to write. Maybe I’ll get to it next year.