Blanked

We had the first of our new season of open days today. If you came along, thanks for coming, it was nice to see you.

I did the opening talk and it seemed to go OK, then I sat down to run the little question and answer session afterwards. I was introducing our staff and I got to Helen Wright, one of our lecturers. As I was starting to announce her name to the group another part of my brain was thinking how terrible it would be if I forgot her surname. So I did. So she was introduced as "Helen, our Quality Officer". Forgetting the name of the person in charge of quality. Way to go Rob.

It is probably the kind of thing which is supposed to happen when you get old, but it has been happening to me for absolutely ages (which might mean I'm very old, but I'm putting it down as an endearing character trait of mine).

Anyhoo, I think it went OK apart from that slipup, and the name did come back to me, and I did apologise.

For me the best part was when all the parents of the candidates took over the Nintendo Wii system we have on loan and showed the young'uns how to play Tennis. Great fun.

Comments

[J.]

Thanks for the warm welcome, the sandwiches and ....the Wii! Could I just say that as we had attended the general open day in the summer it was hugely disappointing to encounter the same 'talks/experiences' today..We had travelled 4-5 hours in anticipation of an exciting day to match the last. Still think the dept. is great but the excitement was missing in replay.

[Rob]

Glad you liked the day. Sorry you felt it was a repeat. We usually tell people who come to the university open days that the format is similar if they come again, I'll make sure that this is made clearer next time we do one.

[David Morris]

I can't believe you forgot Helen's surname! Now I think about it though, I did manage to forget someone's name live on radio once - that was embarrassing! I got a phone call in the studio (off-air) about it a few seconds later.

Anyway - back on topic. Glad the open day went well.It's always good to see people interested in the university.