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.
