Oh man, I've been meaning to post this for a week now but haven't really had a minute to sit down and do it. Did you know that grad school is time-consuming?!
Anyway. Most interesting thing that has happened to me recently: I met a Baron!
How this happened was through my PhD program, of course. My PhD, in "Texts, Contexts & Cultures," is part of an inter-collegiate endeavor, between NUI Galway, Trinity College Dublin, and University College Cork. Last year, we had two classes that were teleconferenced-- we had cameras linking all three groups together, with one professor, and we all interacted that way. Since we've all mostly gone off to do our own research, we haven't had as much to do with each other, but last week we had a big group meet-up down in Cork.
Originally the Galway group lobbied to spend the night, but that didn't end up happening, so we made the 3-hour trip there and back on the day. We left at 9:30 am and got to Cork for lunch, meeting up with our UCC and TCD comrades. After lunch, we had a couple lectures, then a couple workshops, which were lively and interesting. The point of these things is not really to teach us anything specific, because there is no way to have a lecture that pertains specifically to everyone's research, but rather to get us thinking in different ways about our own material-- always a useful enterprise. After the workshops were over, we made our way over to UCC's art gallery, where one of the Cork professors was interviewing Melvyn Bragg.
Melvyn Bragg is, as Wikipedia puts it, "an English author, broadcaster and media personality." He worked for years with the BBC, involved in projects that attempted to bring mass media to the working classes-- basically, to make it "popular." Since popular theatre is what I study, I was really interested in hearing him talk about his works. Eventually his involvement with the Labour party got him appointed to the House of Lords! (The House of Lords is kind of the U.K. equivalent to the U.S. Senate. Both governments have bicameral representation, but while in the U.S. it's the House of Representatives and the Senate, in the U.K. it's the House of Commons and the House of Lords.) In order to sit in the House of Lords, of course, you have to be a Lord... so Melvyn was granted the title of "Baron Bragg"!
Before the interview, there was a wine reception that the TCC group was invited to. We were all standing rather respectfully and quietly talking amongst ourselves, when one of the professors hustled myself and a couple other researchers over to meet Melvyn Bragg. He came up, introduced himself, shook all our hands, and asked us all about our research! He was especially interested in mine, and we chatted about it for a few minutes. He's a very genuine, friendly, down-to-earth type of guy. But after he left, one of my British colleagues, Laura, turned to us and exclaimed "We just met a Baron!" Which suddenly made the whole thing feel rather surreal.
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