I was guest lecturer at one of the universities (we have two) last week, talking to students in the Public Health program about emergency preparedness and response. I spoke to them for forty-five minutes about floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, blizzards, oil spills, bioterrorism, radiation poisoning etc.
The professor forwarded to me the evaluations they wrote. Pretty much all of them were positive except for one young woman who commented “A very interesting speaker but harsh.”
5 comments:
Perhaps you need to add a section to your lecture about what to do with the clueless people whose emergency preparedness kit consists of hair gel, a tube of mascara and their iPod?
I guess that sweet young thing was absent on Darwin Day. Survival of the fittest and all that stuff. Be harsh, Shay, be harsh. The rest of us thank you for it.
Stay harsh. We, in our comfortable lives, need to hear it.
Here's one for you. Last night a friend of ours was in a tractor-trailer accident (not his fault and no one badly hurt, thank goodness). He lost his glasses, wallet, and i Phone. Short story - he wasn't worried about his glasses or wallet, but said he couldn't live without his i Phone. Hopefully, it was the pain meds talking.
can any one say "Polyanna"?
I wouldn't want to rely on her in an emergency.
SHEESH. It reminds me of the time I visited Yosemite Natl Park and a ranger gave a 'campfire talk' about why people should not feed bears. she told several anecdotes about bears stealing food from cars and grabbing food from people's hands and how such bears had to "be taken care of". I asked "Exactly what does that mean ?" She waved her hands and used some euphemism. I said, "You mean they are killed?" "Well, Yes" "Then why don't you just say so? Don't you want to emphasize the consequences of letting the bears get into our stuff?" She seemed uncomfortable. So I asked some very specific questions : How the bears were killed - shot? Yes. What kind of rifle? A 30-30? She said she didn't know. I asked what happened to the dead bears - did the rangers eat them? Were they dumped for other animals to eat? Because it seemed a shame to waste them. She said biologists studied them.
Then she asked for audience ideas on what could be done to 'prevent bears being removed'. Another wussy euphemism!
The crowd had all kinds of pracitcal ideas : display the skulls and pelts of shot bears in a visitor center so people could see how many bears were killed. Show videos of rangers shooting bears. Put up signs telling how many bears are killed in the season due to visitor carelessness. Put the unpleasant consequences right in the public's face so they won't leave their stuff around for bears to find.
The ranger said that the audience was "Harsh"! HA!
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