The Cabinet

Today was the end-of-year party for the seminar that I've been running all year, called the Cabinet of Natural History, and the party was such a success!! PHEW, I've been worried about it for weeks because:

1. The Cabinet attendees have high expectations and can be hard to please and will def tell me if they don't like something (eg if the free food at the party is bad, that kind of thing. Come on.).

2. The speaker I'd asked to give the talk for the party is a postdoc who I think is brilliant and a great teacher. She is applying for a permanent job in the department and decided to treat this party talk as her "job talk" and show off to the department bigwigs. Which is great, but that meant that she was nervous. There was a lot more riding on her talk than on a normal post-lunch party talk outside in a garden!

3. The party was planned to be outside in a beautiful college garden with a buffet lunch, and it was forecast to rain like crazy today.

So, luckily,

1. everyone had a lovely time, although - Mom's worst nightmare - more than 40 people showed up when we'd expected about 20! Whoa! I def didn't get any lunch, but no one else seemed to leave hungry, thank god. Our department did get in trouble with the college's caterers for having too many people show up... but I took it as a huge sign of success that this was the best-attended Cabinet garden party in the Cabinet's 23-year history! Hooray!!

2. Our speaker gave a fabulous talk, as I'd known she would, and impressed all the bigwigs with her thoughtfulness and her fun fast-talking lecture style. She was nervous as hell, but she held it together and I don't think anyone noticed.

3. The clouds held and there were even - gasp - instants of sunshine. The rain started *right* at the end of the party, so it worked very conveniently to chase people out of the garden.

4. Bonus - everyone thanked me for running the Cabinet all year, said really nice things about how good the speakers I'd invited had been, and gave me a card they'd all signed (during the lunch, which I tried to ignore :) ) and a present of books about dinosaurs! It was wonderful. I felt very appreciated and proud, and I didn't put my foot in my mouth too much in my response.

WIN.

lunch pre-talk

Our speaker answering questions while I "chaired" (without a chair?) beneath the college's famous mulberry tree

The audience, with my supervisor in the middle (the gray-haired grinning guy wearing the tan windbreaker)

The head of the Cabinet, Nick Jardine, thanking me and giving me a book about dinosaurs :)

Handing off the Cabinet sign-in book to next year's Secretary!