Linking Thinking

The cold hard facts of freezing to death

Peter Stark could have sim­ply defined hypother­mia as the con­di­tion in which the body is at abnor­mally low body tem­per­a­tures, one that needs treat­ment at body tem­per­a­tures of 35℃ and becomes life threat­en­ing below 32.2℃. Cer­tainly that is what most train­ers would do. Instead he embeds the cold hard facts of freez­ing to death in a story that begins:

When your Jeep spins lazily off the moun­tain road and slams back­ward into a snow­bank, you don’t worry imme­di­ately about the cold. Your first thought is that you’ve just dented your bumper. Your sec­ond is that you’ve failed to bring a shovel. Your third is that you’ll be late for din­ner. Friends are expect­ing you at their cabin around eight for a moon­light ski, a late din­ner, a sauna. Noth­ing can keep you from that.

It is an engross­ing read. Nar­ra­tive expe­ri­ences can be so pow­er­ful. Some will trans­port you to another place and time in a way that is so com­pelling it seems real. A nar­ra­tive like this could pro­vide the struc­ture for an entire train­ing pro­gram. The story offers an orga­niz­ing struc­ture for new expe­ri­ences and knowl­edge. It could shift the focus from a rote mem­o­riza­tion of facts in a text­book to a diag­no­sis of a real-world condition.

♦ ♦ ♦

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