Dear Reader,
When I was a teenager I developed two habits that have stayed with me throughout my life: sports and sarcasm. In middle school, the two intersected when I encountered a coach who simply couldn't resist speaking in sports clichés. I, in turn, couldn't resist responding with smart aleck remarks and that usually got me in a lot of trouble.

One of Coach Oates' favorite sayings, for example, was the overused classic: There is no 'I' in team. "But coach," I would respond, "we're the Seminoles, so actually there is an 'I'- heck, even a 'me' - in our team." That earned me several extra laps after practice.

What really got me going, though, was when Coach simply defied logic. As we entered the last quarter of every game, no matter how far ahead we were, Coach Oates liked to remind us that "eight minutes is an eternity." Yet despite Coach's warnings, every one of those games did, in fact, end 8 minutes later. Pointing this out, I soon discovered, meant carrying sweaty jerseys to the laundry room.

But by far the silliest saying Coach Oates couldn't resist was the famous sports cliché he would pull out when trying to motivate us to play harder. "I need every one of you to give me 110 percent!" he would bellow at us during timeouts. 110 percent? Really? C'mon Coach, that's just bad math. Coach Oates used the phrase so often; I wondered how many of the kids he coached through the years missed percentage questions in math class, thinking 110 was the total amount possible.

I mean, there's no way anyone can truly ever give more than a 100 percent effort, right? At least that's what I used to think before I joined SAS Education. You see, with training from SAS Education, SAS users can extend their knowledge and enhance their skills, stretching their capabilities beyond the 100% capacity they have on their own. With more than 150 courses in multiple curricula areas and delivery methods, a half-dozen SAS Certifications, and a number of educational events, SAS Education provides you with new ways to tackle old problems and strategies to help you become a better SAS user. Take a look at this month's issue and you'll see what I mean.

So, maybe I owe Coach Oates an apology. I guess you can get more than 100% from yourself if you have a little help from your friends. And this he would be glad to hear: there really is no "I" in SAS Education.

Thanks for reading,
Larry LaRusso
Editor, SAS Training Report