Remarks & Perception

I cannot believe that it has been 4 months since I last posted.  Granted, no one is probably reading this, but I feel as if I have failed.  I had full intentions of writing weekly about my experiences with ARFF, technophile wonderments, and whatever else fancied me.

I suppose I could blame it on the holidays.  Isn’t that what most people do in around this time of the year?

I did have a blog published before Christmas about my experience at the Orlando International Airport’s Full Scale Exercise: Professor Learns Invaluable Lesson from Airport Exercise.   I just found out it was published, though…but, it is exciting never-the-less.

The University posted it on their Facebook site, which caused me to share it and in turn a few of my ARFF colleagues shared it, as well.  This was extremely kind of them, but one of them had a response from someone that was rather interesting to me.

In my writing I stated that I quickly knew that what I was doing at the FSE was not something that could be learned from reading a textbook.  The response stated something along the lines of, “Duh! Not learn something from a textbook?! Typical teacher.”

While someone may have been easily offended by that remark, I was rather saddened by it.  If that was their only takeaway from my article to try to spotlight the ARFF personnel and the importance of preparedness by emergency personnel, then I had failed.  I responded that I believe we are all teachers and could all learn a lot from reading, but what I was saying was that not everything comes from books.  Sometimes academics forget that while it is good to teach, learn and cultivate knowledge from textbooks, we must also remember that we need to keep in touch with where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

Of course, then I reminded myself that negativity is so easy to provide and so prevalent in today’s society. The thought also crossed my mind everyone’s perception is different, but that doesn’t make it wrong from mine. Good quote that I like to remember:

Maybe this individual, who interestingly enough studied at the University at which I teach, had bad experiences with professors who thought that they were all-knowing beings. I am sorry if that happened to them.  I am sorry that my observations and the push for people to know more about ARFF missed this person.  I will strive to write my blogs and articles better next time. That is how one gets better at writing, after all. 

However, whether I receive a negative or positive comment, I am happy  people read what I wrote. I mean isn’t that the objective?

But, in order to achieve that then I shall have to post more.  That is a mighty fine idea, if I do say so myself.