Week of wonders

This week has been epic. Maybe even this whole month has been a whirlwind of being busy and thinking hard and getting shit done. Yay!

On Monday I gave a talk at my favorite seminar, the Cabinet, which I ran for a year and which is attended by all the people I most respect in HPS. It was my first talk on my PhD research, and it was on a chapter that's still an Ugly First Draft (though a really cool topic with awesome quotes from preparators and great photos). Also, I wanted to TALK it, not read it.

Clearly this was a lot to ask, especially in front of an audience who pretty much all knew me, which could have meant either that they didn't hold back and destroyed my argument with merciless questions, "friendly fire" style, OR that they would be laid-back and super nice. In the end I think they were a combination of the two - tough and wide-ranging and very insightful questions, but said with a smile and a sense of competing with each other to get to ask their question. Really - there's ALWAYS a pause of about 20 seconds before anyone asks a question after a Cabinet talk (I know - when I was the Chair, I sweated buckets during those 20 seconds every week hoping desperately that someone would ask a question) but as soon as I shut up there were like 5 hands in the air. Phew! AND people stayed late because there were so many questions - we finished 20 minutes after Cabinet officially finishes. And that NEVER happens. A compliment, definitely, but man, was I brain-dead when I finally got to leave. :) AND - the biggest compliment of all and one that I had never even hoped for - my beloved supervisor, who sleeps through every talk regardless of its quality or his level of interest or the amount of caffeine in his blood, STAYED AWAKE THROUGH THE WHOLE 35-MIN TALK AND THE 45-MIN QUESTIONS. Wow! My ego about tripled in size when my friend told me that. (I hadn't dared to look at him the whole time because I knew it would hurt my feelings to see him asleep...)

So the careful writing and editing and practicing were all worth it for the glorious interest and compliments of my colleagues, even though I wasn't hungry and didn't sleep for about three days before the talk. Strange, that never happens to me. It was so bad that Tobias learned a new English word - "cranky". That part of the talk prep process was perhaps not worth it...

In addition to the Cabinet talk, I turned in four job applications this month, with the crucial help of my supervisor and my mom in editing CVs and cover letters and research proposals. I also edited one of my old MPhil essays to be published in a little informal booklet for the Whipple Museum, celebrated the vivas of two of my favorite HPS PhD students (Drs Susannah and Katie), and marked 11 student essays. And I got off the plane 19 days ago... no wonder I've been cranky.

Other huge wins this week - New Hall/Clare Hall women's football team beat Downing College 4-2. It was SO FUN to slide around in the mud, sometimes connecting with the ball but mostly not, in the pouring rain while the other team of mostly posh undergrads cheered each other on with cries of "Don't let the rain dampen your spirits, girls!" and "Go [insert posh girl's name, e.g., Dora, Caroline, Sophie, Annabelle...]!" Hilarious. And we - the unposh, mostly graduate, mostly out-of-shape, and many never-played-football-before team - actually somehow won!

Then yesterday I got an email from a researcher whose survey I took about students' reading habits (where, when, how long each day, with technology or not, etc...) saying that I'd won the survey prize! I always thought those "chance to win a prize if you take this survey" claims were mythical, but I actually will get a shiny new Kindle! Awesome!!

And today, finally, I was chosen to be interviewed and in a photo shoot for Clare Hall, for an article about the telephone fundraising campaign we did a year ago. The whole thing was pretty surreal, in part because I have not-so-good memories of being a telemarketer for Clare Hall and had to be careful what I said on record, and in part because the photo shoot was not a smiling pose of the group of us, but a literally surrealist shot of us carefully arranged between birch trees in the college gardens, holding retro rotary-dial telephones and pretending to talk on them. ?! It was also cold and and the photographer would yell things like "step 10 centimeters to my right, please!" (I have no idea how far that is, by the way) and fuss with the light exposure while we shivered (because he wouldn't let us wear coats in the shot. Obviously.). I was not impressed with the whole process, but my face (and its turquoise rotary phone prop...) will be in the glossy magazine received by all the Cambridge alumni! Another addition to my ego.

Even after all these successes, I'm still feeling more dazed than celebratory. Hopefully I can shake it off and get my ego under control before it gets destroyed by the first wave of job rejections in a few months. Until then, I really hope I can relax in time to turn 26 and a half tomorrow. :)

I hope you all have a week of successes too, but without the crankiness or the daze or the gigantic ego!!

"Brace! Brace!"

On EasyJet flights around Europe, the safety talk before takeoff includes instructions for what to do "if you hear 'BRACE! BRACE'!" - namely, bend over in your seat and put your arms over your head. If you're flying to Germany, for example, all the instructions are in German, except the "BRACE! BRACE!". If you're flying to France or Italy or Spain or wherever, same thing - "BRACE! BRACE!" rings out in English in the middle of the local language. That line stood out to me, because airlines don't say that in the American safety talk and because "BRACE! BRACE!" said in English is apparently an international signal for "look out", "take care", "something's about to happen to you".

That's how I feel today - the need to "BRACE! BRACE!" for 2012. Holy crap. The past two new years have been pretty much the same for me, just researching and writing in the same place on the same topic. On New Years Eve 2009, I knew where I'd be for 2010; on NYE 2010 I knew where I'd be for 2011. But on NYE 2011, I had no freaking clue what 2012 will bring.

Will I finish my PhD in June as planned?

Will I get a job in 2012?? Where will it take me? Where will I be on NYE 2012? What continent, even?! (Man, wherever I am, I hope I have a paycheck.)

My dad retired *today*. What will his new 60%-time work schedule be like?

Two Wylie cousins are expecting babies in 2012... will we have any other new family members?

Will Obama be reelected?

What will happen at the London Olympics?

.... ????

OMG. This all feels so out of my hands. I'm bracing myself for whatever 2012 will bring.

May you feel prepared for this new year's adventures, and may all your adventures be GREAT.