Going to the French Market our group was unsure of how educated the Wheaton community was about proper pharmaceutical disposal. We arrived with our survey questions and our informational brochures ready to educate the community about this important issue. The manager of the French market was very kind and politely suggested that we stand by the exit of the French market over by the cider donuts. We soon found however that as people were leaving the French market were generally in a hurry and not willing to take a brochure, much less answer our survey. We then attempted to simply greet people with a friendly smile while trying to hand them a brochure, but we found that this approach was also too passive. We quickly decided that we needed a new strategy and decided to try the entrance of the French Market. We also decided that we needed to come up with a way to introduce ourselves to people walking by. With a new location and a new strategy we were ready to try again. “Hi my name is Yuxi and I am a student at Wheaton College. We are working on a project regarding proper pharmaceutical disposal and we were wondering if you have ever been taught how to properly dispose of your pharmaceuticals?”‘ This simple intro seemed to help us to be personable and generally people were more than happy to stop and talk with us. The amount of support for Wheaton College in the community is amazing and we were very fortunate to have so many people who were willing to stop and answer questions for a couple of college students. In summary, we found that you could not be afraid of people saying no or saying that they were not interested in what we had to say. This is an important life skill because you can’t be afraid to take risks and go outside your comfort zone. Through the process of trial and error, we were able to figure out the best way of informing the people about pharmaceutical disposal.

From Samuel Lee, Lyndsey Pritchard, and Yuxi Zhao

With Jenny Snyder, Kate Fredrikson, Austin Patrick, and Joe Lee