Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Happy Friday! For many of you, this may be the last week of school until the fall. This weekend will likely be full of graduations, new beginnings, and sweet endings of a very important stage in some of your (or your friend's) lives. Which is all the more reason to kick the weekend off with our collection of all things random.

And if today's edition of "Snippets and Soundbites" isn't enough, be sure to check out page 38 in this month's (and every month's) issue of ec!

Test anxiety

Some people don't take tests well. That's just a fact. That's why so many of us get freaked out about them. But what about your driving exam? Some people fail because they run stop signs. Some fail because they can't parallel park. . . and others just get completely freaked out by the process and let the nervousness and anxiety overwhelm them—and they fail the test. But in the Netherlands, they have a plan for those people: a special driving exam designed to ease the concerns of would-be drivers who suffer from test anxiety. The person giving the test is instructed to try to put the drivers at ease. The drivers are allowed to take a time out if the stress of the whole test gets to be too much and the pace of the test is supposed to be leisurely. Some of us on the ec staff could have used that kind of test back when we took our driving exam! Read more here.

It's never too late to graduate
It's the season of graduations, and Hazel Soares didn't want to be left out. That's right, the 94-year-old grandmother and great-grandmother of 40 graduated from college in California this past weekend. Soares had wanted to attend college right after high school, but her high school graduation happened to coincide with the Great Depression. At that point, it was impossible to go to college, so Soares went on with her life. She married twice, had six kids, and worked as a nurse and event organizer before retiring. She never gave up her dream of going to college, though, and got her Associate's degree when she was 85. Now with a degree in art history in hand, she says she hopes to work as a docent at a San Francisco Bay area museum. She is believed to be the second oldest person to earn a college degree. Nola Ochs (OAKS) of Kansas became the oldest when she graduated from Fort Hays State University three years ago at age 95, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. (Coincidently, Ochs earned ANOTHER degree this past Saturday, when she received her master's degree in liberal studies from Fort Hays.) To learn more and see a video of Hazel at graduation, go here.

For what it's worth

And finally there's the tale of how America's oldest silver dollar also became the world's most expensive coin. The owner of the mint condition 1794 Liberty dollar confirmed Thursday that he sold it for $7.85 million. The U.S. began producing silver dollars in 1794 and this one appears to be in near-perfect condition. The coin has a portrait of Lady Liberty with long, straight hair on the front and a noticeably skinny American eagle on the back. "That's the type of piece that is available maybe once in a lifetime," said Martin Logies, curator of the Cardinal Collection, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving rare coins and educating the public about them. He said the foundation plans to put the coin on display. Of the approximately 1,750 such dollars produced that year, only about 150 are known to exist. Go here for more.