It wasn’t a cast of thousands, but even a cast of dozens is large for a theater production on campus. Such was the case for OCCC’s rendition of the William Shakespeare comedy, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” directed by Professor Brent Noel.

After the Nov. 19 performance, several of the performers and audience members commented on the play.

“I love Shakespeare,” said Hollie Clear, an OCCC graduate who was in the audience that night.

It’s OK for people from different backgrounds and cultures to be open and learn from one another, said Penny Hampton, Professional Development director in a Nov. 16 luncheon speech that focused on diversity.

About 20 students attended the event.

Before going into her speech, Hampton asked, “What is diversity?”

An OCCC graduate who is bilingual in English and Spanish has taken over as coordinator of the new Capitol Hill Center.

Sergio Gallegos has been employed at OCCC since 2006, working in the office of Recruitment and Admissions. He began the new position at the beginning of November.

As millions of Americans prepare to feast upon turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie this Thanksgiving, Nov. 25, thousands more are starving.

That’s why groups like the City Rescue Mission have organized seasonal events to give those stricken by poverty, addiction, mental illness and homelessness something to be thankful for, said Tiffany Webb, development director.

Event volunteers are needed to put together Thanksgiving meal boxes and adopt dinner tables at the City Rescue Mission’s annual Thanksgiving dinner, Webb said.

“We are always in need of volunteers, especially for the holidays,” she said.

For the first time in more than 10 years, an all-female group of students will host the Eclectic 2010 Student Portfolio Art show.

Talisa Davis, Samantha Hayes, Tara Samuels, Betty Schwartz, Sara Smith, and Tina White are all graduating visual arts students, said visual art Professor Mary Ann Moore.

The exhibit will be 6 to 8 p.m., Dec. 3 to 16 in the OCCC Visual and Performing Arts Center gallery, Moore said.

An excellent resource for both career and employment information is the United States Department of Labor website and the Occupational Outlook Handbook 2010-11 edition located at http://www.bls.gov/oco.

The site features hundreds of jobs. For example: registered nurse, automotive technician, aviation maintenance, accounting; computer science, teaching and biological fields.

Each career field article explains the educational level required, earnings/salaries, expected job prospects, work duties and links to additional resources.

Winter months signal shorter days, two major holidays and semester finals. Those things may leave students and faculty dealing with added stress or depression.

Student Support Specialist Mary Turner said many people suffer with seasonal depression when the days get shorter.

Many famous video game designers do not have college degrees, but instead started their careers in other ways, such as being a computer program debugger. Hironobu Sakaguchi is one such designer.

Professor Akram Taghavi-Burris’s aspiring game design students explained by way of a slide show why they like their favorite video game producer.

Students each gave a brief overview of their favorite game designer, such as when and where they were born, where they went to college, and what company they were affiliated with in the past and present.

“One of the reasons that they do it,” Taghavi-Burris said, “is because the video game industry is so new. Since the class focuses on the history of video games, there’s only so much that we can pull from the textbooks because there is only about 40 years of information.

For student Elizabeth White, Nov. 18 could be a life-changing day. That’s the day she plans to stop smoking.

White, 19, is among many on campus and thousands nationwide who will participate in the American Cancer Society’s 35th Great American Smokeout.

That day, smokers are encouraged to put down their cigarettes for 24 hours and make a plan to quit smoking altogether, according to the ACS website.

Thousands of international students come to the U.S. every year in search of a college degree. Among those is a motivated young man who traveled from the Middle Eastern country of Oman to fulfill his dream of becoming a successful businessman.

Twenty-one-year old freshman Ahmed Omer, business management major, is a full-time international student at OCCC.

Omer’s first name was one of the names of the Prophet Muhammad in the Islamic religion. He was born and raised in Oman but is a citizen of Pakistan.

Pakistan is a South Asian country, bordering the Arabian Sea, between India on the east, Iran and Afghanistan on the west, and China in the north, according to The World Factbook.