my friend lou ann and i were sitting backwards in the bleachers at a junior varsity volleyball game. we were cramming for a test that we had the next day, trying to learn everything we needed to know before the varsity game started. she was the athletic one who was actually playing; i was a cheerleader.
as part of our test, we were expected to know details regarding the united states cabinet, including the members and the order that the departments were created, as this apparently dictates the order of precedence and of course this is information you need to sleep well at night.
after attempting to memorize these unsuccessfully for a while, we came up with a mnemonic. it must have worked well, as i still remember both the mnemonic and the cabinet information, nearly twenty years later.
the mnemonic was "shannon takes disc jockeys in a car. lou ann hires horses to escort executives" and here was what it helped us to remember:
Shannon (State) Takes (Treasury) Disc (Defense) Jockeys (Justice) In (Interior) A (Agriculture) Car (Commerce). Lou Ann (Labor) Hires (Health & Human Services) Horses (Housing and Urban Development) To (Transportation) Escort (Energy) Executives (Education).
we would need to update it for today's cabinet, as it doesn't include the department of veterans affairs or, of course, the infamous department of homeland security.
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