Maybe this is universal but I always find candid lectures or speeches easier to digest. I suspect the conversational tone of this week’s presenters stem from speaking in a language they’re not fluent in but it was this that made the talks easier to remember. The thing that stuck with me second most (the first being how incredibly Scandinavian they both looked) was Olof Stjernstromâs remark about how we naturally problematize our world. Later that night Dr Mark Groulx and I went to Fort St John for the weekend to conduct facilitations with seniors to get their opinion on what makes a seniors complex good or bad and unsurprisingly they had quite the list of complaints; some were serious (âif thereâs a fire I canât escape because the elevator goes out and I cant walk the stairsâ) and some less so (âthe salads are too small here and I like big saladsâ). Near the end of the talks a woman stood up in the back and said that she has visited many other seniorâs homes and commented on how their current facility and its amenities are much better than some of the others sheâs visited ending with âI think itâs important to not take what weâve got for granted, I know this place isnât the Ritz but itâs certainly not the pitsâ which was not only a hilarious and positive note to end the discussions on but was also really refreshing to hear.
Since I got to Prince George a little over a month ago Iâve had to continually convince people that I genuinely like it here. âReally?â they say
âReally really. I can drive 30 minutes in any direction and find mountains and trails and awesome wildlifeâ I say.
âYeah but itâs kind of sketchyâ theyâll counter, to which I remind them that I drove to Prince George from Toronto, a small little town in Ontario which believe it or not has some sketchy areas of its own but that fact alone doesnât extinguish every light of positivity the city has to offer (the traffic does though). So, while Olof’s work doesnât seem relevant to mine in an academic sense, I think its relevant in a way to a lot of graduate projects because most of us are here studying a problem and while itâs important to address these problems and issues scientifically, itâs easy to get swept up in the doom and gloom mentality. It’s important to recognize when we have slipped into a state of despair so that we can take a step back out of our bubble or risk a life reliant on Cipralex.
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