Last week, McGall Engineering students and faculty gathered in the T. Trottier-Trottier building to hear an important announcement from the Dean of the faculty. Rumours had been circulating for weeks that something had been invented in the McGall Civility Engineering department that would change the way humanity interacted with its scaly counterparts, the reptiles.
Dean of Engineering Jaime Icedhell announced the results of an undergraduate student’s research, Louise Pea, who completed a Sort of Uninterested in Research in Engineering (SURE) project last summer in the field of solid water mechanics. The story goes that Pea spent a busy Fall semester causing ruckus in Red’s Pub, selling churros in McConnell Hallway, and inventing the #neknomination phenomenon.
But through an engagement in critical thinking that “came out of nowhere and surprised the crap out of her” one evening at Red’s Pub, Pea identified a problem that stemmed from her appreciation of the class Reptilia that could be solved with her experience in solid water mechanics, and could make her a lot of money.
At once, Pea conducted a meta-analysis of work done in the field of solid water mechanics, spoke to a number of zoology profressors, and attended a number of reptile-awareness colloquia in San Francisco to learn as much as she could about the problem. After three weeks of skipping Red’s Pub and telling her friends “I have too much to do,” Pea submitted her idea straight to the Dean of Engineering herself, and the news diffused out immediately.
Icedhell proclaimed at the gathering, “Pea has closed the discriminatory gap between the prevalence of winter sports (namely ice skating) at McGall, and Reptilian society, as exclusionary mass invitations to ice skating are clearly offensive to reptiles and owners of reptiles due to their inability to withstand the bitter cold conditions of living in Canada.”
“Over the last month, Pea has put a lot of genuine thought into how the limitation of cold-bloodedness can be overcome so that winter sports can be as accessible to reptiles as they are to their human owners and allies. We know that many of you find it ‘sad that anyone would be offended by this,’ because, like, why do you have to be so sensitive, right? But I have reptile friends, and I can see what you mean as a fellow mammal, but this invention will probably make a lot of money.”
“The details of the innovation are quite technical, cannot be discussed before the patents go through, and so far are only applicable to the genus Iguana. We had to choose one kind of reptile to prototype the design, but we can assure you that it will soon be made available to all members of the class Reptilia. What we can tell you is that it has something to do with small reptile foot-shaped skates, and iguana-sized wool onesies containing heating cables powered by a small solar cell situated on an adorable rainbow coloured toque that sits on the iguana’s head.”
Following Icedhell’s description of the invention, the crowd erupted in squealing applause. A networking reception followed the announcement, and Pea was busily adorned by reptiles, reptile enthusiasts, and lab-to-market investors, so the McGall Weekly could not ask her for her thoughts on the announcement, but one could easily say on her behalf that she is very pleased with the outcome of her invention.