A teacher calls out a student to tell her everything he knows about earthworms. And he starts as follows: “Earthworm is an animal living underground and when it rains, it comes out to the surface, often to a pasture, where there is a cow, which, you know, gives milk and…”

Whether the student managed to “get away” with avoiding the answer and providing other information or not mostly depends on the teacher. This is how Miloš Milovanović, a journalist and an anchor at TV N1, opened the second lecture at the autumn LSPR, held on Saturday, November 16.

Th first part of the lecture, related to communication techniques and tools, was held by a Faculty of Drama Arts professor Srđan Karanović, more familiar to us as an actor and a TV host. He pointed out that before any public appearance, we should ask ourselves what our psychological action was and then strive towards its execution, adding that regardless of what and how we communicated, we should be present in a moment. Thus we will be focused enough to achieve our goal, namely to execute our psychological action with high quality. As a focus needs to be practiced, we used various games and practical work to establish what our major challenges were, and then worked on overcoming them. Therefore, improvisation is highly important. Which the student from the pun knew how to apply.

What the student is criticised for, however, was explained in the second part of the lecture. For good public appearance, which we whole-heartedly practiced with Miloš Milovanović, precision is a key. When someone asks us a question, we should reply clearly, directly, following the golden “less is more” rule. Naturally, it is important to communicate our messages in the best possible manner, bearing in mind all the circumstances around us, including seriousness of a situation, topic, media outlet, journalist and many others. Thus, when someone asks us about an earthworm, we should carefully consider what to say about it and how. And only about it, without mentioning a cow.

Although the story about an earthworm and a cow may seem as total nonsense, rather than a paradox, it has its point. I am eager to find out about the story waiting for me next Saturday at new LSPR lectures!