Day Twelve: Outrage

Finally, a sunny day: some of my classmates and I had already though about proposing to the Professor to have some lectures outside (when the weather in early April was still nice and hot…) but due to meteorological reasons we never had the chance until today. And besides, it had been quite a long day – some vitamin D would not have hurt at all. I have actually read an article about the effectiveness of studying outside under the sun: first of all, sitting still on a chair of an office for the whole day does definitely not help our physical health (but we could say also the mental one is affected…); second, it has been proven that things like air, temperature, or

scenery actually affect our focus and can improve our productivity as well as work-satisfaction (and not just a hip new office or your time-off…); third, it does make sense to me to think that human beings do not have the office with a computer screen in front of them as their natural habitat – and this, of course, can cause quite a bit of stress like for animals in cage.

Outside we first practiced some first-aid skills and then played once again a role game – looking back now I feel like I truly am the worst actor possible, laughing whenever I didn’t know how to role act, but back then I must admit I felt like I was really into the scene: I rescued Thomas, and after having finally understood that one of his legs was missing (he had to tell me, otherwise I still would have thought he simply broke it…), I improvised a tourniquet and with Alice we carried him to the hospital by shoulder to shoulder. When then the turn to be a victim came, I played the lightly injured one – walking around limping and bothering every rescuer to help a dead friend. Being serious once again – regarding the first aid practices – I had already the chance to get to know them in my high school, but not because every Italian high school has to provide such a course… simply, the local red cross smartly thought that it would have been helpful to teach all the students a basic first aid in case of any emergency. What really bother me still, however, is that such idea came only after a student died during lunch break because no one else around had been able to save him from chocking with his prosciutto sandwich – I found the news unbelievable, it was 2016 back then and still nowadays no institution has thought yet it would be necessary to insert a first aid course everywhere…

Back to the lecture, another thing that left me a lot to think about was the wide difference among our risk maps: in particular, I have realised how western people in general (me included probably) tend to aggrandize any type of risk. For example, when we were asked to list possible hazards in Paris and their overall impact on us, looking at the tables of each group I bet it would not have been rare to find yellow or even red situations; now, I admit I did not realise it at the beginning too, but thinking about it… it’s still Paris! If we don’t feel safe enough not even in one of the most ‘developed’ countries in the world, then I wonder how many possibilities of survival we have in Nigeria or Venezuela or I don’t know… It can be argued of course that given an out-of-the-ordinary scenario the first thing the human mind perceives is the worst outcome possible – or that western people are not used at all (at least anymore…) to such risky situations – but, come on, I guess both the police force and the healthcare service still work in France.