Ridiculous Safety Training

So my grad program is in the school of engineering. Today, late Friday afternoon, the school recently required all of its graduate students to attend a mandatory, two-hour safety training.

The students in attendance fell into two distinct groups: (1) those who would never step foot in an actual laboraty, such as those in computer science or my program; (2) those who would likely be involved in extensive lab work, which is basically the rest of the programs.

In an effort to present a "one-size-fits-all" training to all the students, we were forced to sit though an extremely irrelevant, dumbed-down lab safety presentation. Some topics included:

• MSDS sheets (not how to read one...just what it is)
• Safety gear (not what is required under specific circumstances...just some examples of what safety gear is...i.e. gloves, goggles, etc)
• Consequences of not using safe practices (not what, specifically, might cause a fire...but just the general idea that a fire is something that might happen)

There's more, but you get the idea.

All the information that was presented consisted of basic concepts I had been taught in high school and undergraduate science classes. Keep in mind that I only took the basic requirements for science. And keep in mind that we were all GRADUATE level students.

As I see it:

NON-LAB STUDENTS...like me...were forced to sit through training that was not only irrelevant to our activity on campus, but also implied that we had no common sense and had never ever taken a science course.

LAB STUDENTS...were forced to sit through training that they should have been able to present themselves. After all, if they're pursuing the sciences, wouldn't most have an advanced understanding of what lab safety entails? So nothing learned for them here. And for those who don't practice safety percautions at the most basic level...wouldn't the more likely issue here relate to their attitude toward safety rather than their ignorance about the subject?

Needless to say, I was furious about wasting two hours of my time on this.