The Subjunctive
January 3, 2014
As a frequent traveler to foreign lands and also as a college English major and high school English teacher, my ears perked up when a speaker said recently that there are some languages that, unlike English, do not have the subjunctive verb mood or mode. I love the subjunctive!
That’s the mood of what might have been, the speaker said. For example, “Had I studied harder, I would have received a better grade.” And “If I were you, I would have studied much longer.”
The subjunctive can also be the mood of excuses, I thought. For example, “If the official hadn’t made that traveling call, we would have won the game.” But I digress.
The subjunctive verb mood is used for the hypothetical. This makes it most valuable as a mindset before taking any action. It helps one think of unintended consequences.
But the subjunctive mood is also useful for the remedial: “If we had done this or that differently then, perhaps the result would have been better.”
Thinking in the subjunctive mood as we plan before initiatives, and then also as we evaluate after plans have been rolled out, are the one-two punch of effective project management.
What we must avoid, however, is thinking of the subjunctive as the mood of regrets. “If only I had . . .” And then doing nothing to try to change the future.
As we think about the year just past and about the year ahead, let’s use the subjunctive mood for its better purposes – planning and evaluation, not excuses and regrets.
A Different Play for Football?
April 30, 2013
Football is an original high school sport. It is one of the first sports sponsored that was by schools even before the MHSAA existed as an organization.
Because football started in schools, not communities, football has been the high school sport least affected by non-school sports programs. Until now.
Non-school seven-on-seven football threatens interscholastic football. Commercialized seven-on-seven football threatens to do to interscholastic football what AAU types have done to basketball, and other entities have done to volleyball, soccer and other school sports.
A national committee was convened last year to address seven-on-seven football. It recognized problems but could only wring its hands regarding solutions.
I’d like to see the MHSAA convene representatives of the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association and the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association to mine for more meaningful responses in Michigan.
A limited number of days of seven-on-seven football involving school coaches and their students is already permissible during the summer. If more days were allowed in the summer under tightly controlled circumstances (read “non-commercial”), would this tend to improve the environment of seven-on-seven football? Would it also help to allow a few days of seven-on-seven football practice and play in the spring? Or would that hurt the spring sports programs of schools?
Can we learn from what happened in non-school basketball and discern a different game plan for non-school football if we now respond differently (and more quickly!) for football than we did for basketball 20-30 years ago?