harvard

I spent last week at Harvard giving the Agassiz lecture series. Since I graduated about 10 years ago, this is now the 3rd time I've come back to give a talk at my alma mater.  The first time was about 4 or 5 years ago, and I distinctly recall being very nervous, worrying about whether I had lived up to my adviser's mentors.  The second time as about a year ago.  I only gave a short talk in a symposium in honor of Adam Dziewonski, so there really wasn't much time to get very nervous, though I did fret a little before my talk.  But this time, my third time, I wasn't nervous at all. For better or worse, I am who I am.  I'm doing what I like doing and am in perfect harmony with where I am in my progress as a scientist. I know what I know and I know what I don't know.  Nothing else really seems to matter to me other than my own research and the things closest to me - my immediate and extended family. I'm content with where I stand.

I gave 6 talks. Fortunately, the audience wasn't the same for each talk, so if I bored anyone, I didn't do it too many times to the same person. The first was a formal lecture on long-term climate change.  This was prefaced earlier in the day by a chalkboard primer on the long-term climate talk.  I gave another version of the climate talk in Charlie Langmuir's class mid-week.  I followed my climate change talk with a chalkboard talk on the origin and evolution of continents.  This was followed by chalkboard talks on the redox evolution of the Earth's deep interior and finally a talk on the deep sulfur cycle.  By giving chalkboard talks instead of formal powerpoint talks, we were able to have two-way discussions, which led to new ideas as both parties were forced to think on their feet.  My approach was to go with the flow, and this way, both parties learned something - well, at least I learned a lot from the audience.  If you give a ppt talk, you're lecturing to the audience; perhaps they might learn, but you certainly won't learn anything. (By the way, never trust a person who only knows how to give powerpoint presentations... and never trust an audience who wants a powerpoint presentation and judges your worth based on your presentation style).