Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Animal behaviorist a bad speaker? week 9

After a long and stressful weekend at the PRSSA conference I came back to Ada to sit through a somewhat enjoyable lecture. Dr. Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, discussed animal behavior and how animals have emotions. In addition, he talked about the welfare of animals and if they have a moral sense. In addition to this lecture Dr. Marc Bekoff was also in my animal behavior class on this morning to discuss several topics. And if that was not enough, I got to sit through another lecture tonight, which was essentially the same lecture he presented on Tuesday night. Moreover, each one of his presentations were scattered, disorganized and had no structure whatsoever. My theory here is that scientists/animals behaviorists have so much information stored in their brain that when they try and present the information it just comes out as one giant mess of disorganized thoughts. His theories and ideas were very thought-provoking, but every time we started going into detail about one topic he would completely shift gears and talk about something else. I think he should have taken more public speaking classes or even more communication classes. He really didn't even know how to use a PowerPoint as well.
Therefore, I believe that PR professionals and biologists are two different types of people who are extremely smart individuals but very different ways. PR practitioners are good at being sociable, writing, speaking, problem solving and they are usually fairly computer savvy. In comparison, biologists are good at analyzing information, writing sort fragmented sentences, solving mathematical operations and analyzing statistical data. They seem to be somewhat isolated and not as outgoing as PR people. Nonetheless, I find it hard for me to be a PR student and then switch gears and learn about biology because these two areas are so completely different. However, I feel like it makes me a more well rounded individual.

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