Many Cosmic Variance readers will recognize friend-of-the-blog Allyson Beatrice — frequent commenter, occasional solo blogger, and co-blogger at Cocktail Party Physics. For a while now, Allyson’s day job has been as an administrator and conference organizer for groups of scientists and engineers — a task of uncertain rewards which, for whatever murky reasons, she truly seems to love.
I’m a lab secretary. If I’m your lab’s secretary, I have access to your credit cards, your CV, your passport, and your society memberships. I could write a crackpot paper about string theory and its effects on pineapple custard and publish it under your name on Optics Express.
But I wouldn’t do that. My job is to get you to the plane on time so that you can present your brilliant paper on quantum physics and gravity in the solar system to a bunch of people whose lives revolve around fun new uses for cesium fountains. I have no idea what any of it means, but if some government bureaucrat gets in between you and your travels, I will cut a bitch to make sure you get to your conference.
Unfortunately, through a series of circumstances too forehead-slappingly stupid to be convincingly related here, Allyson is soon going to be out of her current job. (She gave her notice at her lab, under the impression that an even better gig had been lined up, before the rug was pulled out from under her.)
So — anyone in the LA area in the market for an extraordinarily talented and dedicated lab secretary? Whoever ultimately hires Allyson will be extremely lucky, but in this economy jobs don’t come easily. Things are tough all over, but it’s heartbreaking to see someone so good go jobless through no fault of their own. Email me and I’ll pass along any leads. And thanks.
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:37 am
LMFAO @ “cut a bitch”!
Loooove the attitude! We could user her at Ricoh, here in Atlanta
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Ouch. Best of luck Allyson
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Allyson’s co-blogger at Cocktail Party Physics here. I just want to add my kudos to Sean’s praise of Allyson’s abilities. I’ve had a sneak peek at her resume and there ain’t much secretarial about it, whatever those titles have been. Allyson’s a crackerjack conference organizer, managing editor, publications manager, international rights manager, lab health & safety trainer, purchaser, and has technical & scientific editorial experience. Did I mentioned she’s published a book? And is working on the second one right now? She’s smart, she’s experienced, she has loads of initiative and she’s got lots of OJT along with that killer attitude. She’d be a tremendous asset to anybody’s lab and besides that, she’d be fun to work with.
Don’t let that “secretarial” title fool you. What Allyson really is, is a very professional Project Manager.
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Dear Science Dean at Any Large University: Please find a way to fire one of your highly-paid senior faculty (e.g. that one who hasn’t published in a decade and doesn’t take on new students); then hire this woman and a new junior faculty member (or 2-3 postdocs or 4-6 grad students).
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:17 pm
I wish Allyson luck, but I think she should downplay the “getting people to conferences on time” aspect of her skills. She seems to have many others, and I predict that one of the few good things to come out of this crisis will be the realization that 99% of conferences are a colossal waste of time and money. I know of an institution where postdoc money was cut back so that conference money would not be. That sort of scandal will soon be as extinct as gargantuan pensions for failed bankers, and a damned good thing too.
March 4th, 2009 at 11:46 am
This is what should happen in a department.
It was not what I saw in mine before disillousion overpowered me completely.
I’ll be very jealous of the lab the hires Allyson.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Sili: Sorry to hear that. Most of the secretaries I’ve met for various labs/groups really do care very much for the scientists and engineers they support.
Pope Maledict: IME, conferences are enormously fruitful for collaboration between scientists who often only see each other F2F once or twice a year.
They can be made cheaper, though.