Seminar

In May the university is near deserted. The students are at home, preparing for exams, so quite some of the teaching staff seize the opportunity to work from home, wrestling through lumbering piles of marking.


On Wednesday we have our lunchtime seminars. Generally, the speaker is invited from some other institute, but in May it’s a bit thankless to travel in from elsewhere to only be confronted with an empty room. The gentlemen that organise our seminars had therefore asked Bill and me to do some. If we’re talking for a negligible audience it’s not so bad. Of course Bill’s talk was splendid and not at all badly attended after all. And then it was my turn.

These days are busy, so it was an interesting challenge to somehow get enough “normal” work done AND compose this talk from scratch. But in the end I was satisfied. As the project I am involved in is coming to an end, yet hasn’t yielded the results yet, I decided to talk a bit about the why and the how of sea level studies using salt marshes.

And then the day came. It’s a bit funny to see your own name on the announcements! To my pleasant surprise the room filled up with both physical and human geographers, and geologists, and some people I couldn’t place. I was chuffed! And as I was tired and coffee-fuelled I managed to not fall into the usual trap of talking too fast. Only Roland looked bored. And the discussion afterwards was splendid! Again, scientists of various disciplines contributed. I was glad! It may have been May, and a ridiculously busy time to do this in, especially counting caving responsibilities, but it was good to have done it! Let’s see if I have more results next May...