And no, that headline isn’t the start of a cheesy joke. This was my reality every Friday at 1 p.m. when the University of Maryland’s Introduction to Dairy Judging class met this past spring semester.

It probably took me a lot longer than others to realize what I was missing. The words “World Dairy Expo,” “Madison” and “colored shavings” were relatively lost on me for the first half of my years in the dairy industry.