Here's to not DROPPING THE BALL this year!

Former NYLC students working together on a project. I don't think anyone in this group DROPPED THE BALL. Nice job, guys!

 

It's now a week and a half into 2015, and we hope your new year is going really well. If you made new year's resolutions, we hope that you are making them happen and that they will last a very, very long time--at least to the end of the year. :-)

On New Year's Eve, as you know, they dropped a huge, heavy, expensive ball made of crystals at the top of a building in Time Square to welcome the new year. It's a New York tradition that's called the New Year's Eve Ball-drop. Did you see the event? The ball wasn't actually dropped though, but was made to slide slowly down a pole. It would be a disaster if a 12-foot-wide crystal ball were dropped on top of a building, wouldn't it?

In any workplace or school setting when you're doing a project with others, it can also be a disaster if you DROP THE BALL. This happens when you make a mistake or forget to do something that has negative consequences on the company or on the group you are working together with. The analogy comes from sports. When you are playing with friends and you are supposed to catch the ball but you don't, you let the team down. You DROPPED THE BALL! 

For example, if you were supposed to make an important phone call at work and you forgot to do it and, as a result, the company lost a client, then you DROPPED THE BALL. Another example is if you were supposed to do research on a particular topic and you forgot or didn't do a very good job at it, then you DROPPED THE BALL. As a result, your classmates may not be able to finish the project on time or everyone in your group may get a low grade, and all because you DROPPED THE BALL on them.

So for 2015, we hope you all do an excellent job in your careers and professions and projects at school. We hope you never DROP THE BALL. Best of luck!

Until next time.

Joe Yu, ESL instructor