In the Dark

I travelled to Derby yesterday to give the annual Flamsteed Lecture, named in honour of John Flamsteed who was born in Derby and was the first Astronomer Royal. I was delighted to find out that there was a full house of around 250 in the audience, including a contingent from Derby and District Astronomical Society who had a display outside the lecture hall at the University of Derby.

Curiously the lecture hall itself turned out to be the “Court Room”, a complete mock up of a court complete with witness box, dock and jury box used for training would-be lawyers. Apparently the local police sometimes use it too, for practicing the giving of the evidence. Anyway, I hope in my case it wasn’t too much of a trial for the audience.

After the lecture there was a wine and cheese reception laid on by the University of Derby and the local branch of Waterstone’s stayed open late so I could do a book signing. That seemed to go well too, although it kept me away from the wine. I didn’t keep track of how many books they sold, but every little helps!

When the festivities were over I went back to the Midland Hotel near Derby station where I crashed out as I had to get a very early train back this morning to give a postgraduate lecture on statistics. Rushing to get my slides together on the train I made quite a few mistakes – I hate powerpoint – and found myself having to correct on the fly during the lecture. I also discovered I had accidentally deleted one slide altogether. As I got increasingly flustered, the lecture degenerated into one of the worst I’ve ever done.

This sort of reflective practise, criticizing one’s performance, is supposed to be good for lecturers to do, but I think it’s probably better to prepare things more carefully in the first place, i.e. not on the train first thing in the morning while trying to contend with a hangover.

Still, at least the train wasn’t late.

This entry was posted on October 16, 2008 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Books, Talks and Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.