My professors in the environmental science department all have words of wisdom that they share with their classes. Whether it be phrases they made up or quotes they’ve heard in their lifetime, they all bring some type of philosophical, “this will make you think” statements throughout each semester. Recently, one of my professors brought forth one of his statements, which was, “Any crisis presents an opportunity.” When you first hear this, you may wonder what opportunities a ‘crisis’ could possibly bring. My professor made this statement as we were discussing red tide and public health-related events, as scientists have noticed that when such events occur, we are more worried about helping the ongoing situation than collecting data to prevent such events from happening in the first place. Here lies the opportunity in the face of crisis; for scientists to use such events to gather even more data and really get an understanding of what is going on in order to prevent it from happening in the future.
While I enjoyed this discussion, the quote really stuck with me. Our softball team was having some issues, and had to have some meetings where we essentially got chewed out because we weren’t doing what we were supposed to do. I applied that quote to our team situation, and shared it with one of my teammates. While we were going through a much smaller ‘crisis,’ we still had the opportunity to get better, to face adversity and conquer it. We have the ability to use this quote in all aspects of our lives. Although I wouldn’t label our everyday situations as a crisis, we can still use them as an opportunity to learn something and use them as an opportunity to grow. Next time you’re faced with a ‘crisis,’ think about what new opportunity it might be presenting.