The physics prize winners were announced today and it gave me the idea for a thread.
This board is full of talented and clever people. So what honours have people achieved? Or have a tenuous link to? Feel free to brag and big yourself up as long as it doesn’t unmask your true identity.
I’ll start with a couple of tenuous ones. A project I was a key member of won a Cannes Lion, which is the advertising equivalent of an Oscar.
As a European citizen I shared in the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize which was awarded to ‘the people of europe’.
Marching bands are usually organized by squads of four people. Well, at the end of one season in college, the band director named me as one of four members of the hypothetical Ideal Squad. I got a plaque, but it was a big news day or something, because the local media failed to report it.
I don’t really like to brag, so I haven’t brought it up that much in the years since. Usually just when I’m trying to impress people, like the CEO or attractive women. You should see the stunned silence I get when I do, though. I can tell they’re totally in awe.
Which instrument did you play?
I’m an author, and I’ve won third prize in a now-defunct writer’s magazine contest, a Letter of Merit in the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators contest, and an Honorary Mention in this year’s Writer’s Digest Fiction Competition.
I won the first place team and closest to the pin trophies in the company charity golf tournament. Also, received a framed certificate of excellence in fatherhood award from my kids. All are currently displayed on my desk. Viewing hours are whenever I’m here.
The thing I am proudest of is having given an invited 50 minute address (that’s not an hour address, but not nothing either) at a quadrennial meeting of the International Mathematical Union. I also held a named profressorship, the only one in my department. Aside from that I’m pretty proud of my approximately 100 published papers and three books. I have an Erdos number of 2.
Back in 1976, while I was stationed at Camp Humphries in South Korea, I entered and won a “Soldier of the Month” Contest. It was at the behest of my group leader, who wanted *someone *from our unit competing.
It consisted of an interview by a board, on subjects pertaining to the military. I hadn’t intended to study too hard, but when one asshole, a Frank Burns in training if there ever was one, asked me “Who put you up for this?” I studied like crazy. I also practised with two other gals in my barracks who’d done it, and they coached me on things like “don’t wave your hands around so much”
I ended up winning, beating sixteen guys(I was the only woman competing) One of the two guys who came in second was the jerk who’d derided me for entering.
I got a three day pass, a plaque, and a $25 dollar savings bond. I’ve kept the last two as souvenirs all this time.