Ever wonder what RCN Staff get up to on a Friday night?
One Friday night every term, RCN staff leave their responsibilities behind and head to what has become known as our ‘staff koselig (cozy) evenings’. We eat, we drink, we don’t talk about IB. We form teams and compete as part of a mini-staff quiz. But, most importantly, we listen to a featured RCN staff member share with us some details about past research, a hobby, life experience, or an issue of personal interest.
Earlier in the month we had the immense pleasure of welcoming Chris as our featured speaker. Chris delivered both an entertaining and deeply touching talk about his lifelong interest in rock climbing, his journey into physics and teaching, and how both of these have been impacted by his diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease. I see Chris almost everyday on campus, and yet little did I know that he has competed in two World Cups in Climbing; that he has written several books, including an auto-biography that he drafted during 12 days of intensive writing; that he has taught himself to rock climb, surf, speak Norwegian, and build cars out of sheer curiosity and fierce determination. Chris’s response to Parkinson’s has been to keep active, one of his current projects being the reconstruction of yet another Triumph Spitfire sport car. A line from Chris’s talk that seems to sum up his approach to life: “It’s incredible what you can do once you decide to go for it”. After listening to Chris’s talk, it became clear that Chris has really ‘gone for it’ in more ways than one.
