What I learned today...

It's now 10:40 pm and I've dragged my tired body out of bed to scrounge for food and leave a message to the world. Today was a LONG day. I even learned a valuable lesson. It's nearly the boy scout motto.... "Always Be Prepared". You're probably wondering why that's a new lesson. Well, let me enlighten you. I learned that even though you thought you may have covered every eventuality with regards to planning a recruiting visit, the high-level scientist in charge of the recruitment and with whom you try to connect (rarely happens) will wait until the LAST MINUTE to make demands and doesn't care that you may have to catch a vanpool ride home. Oh no, no, no, no..... I very nearly missed my ride home. It was 4:45 when I got the call. I have to be ready to walk out the door at 4:55 in order to catch the van. I finally rushed out at 4:58, rapidly walking towards the meeting place in temps where the wind chill were in the teens. I entered the parking ramp (where the van is parked) only to see a van just like mine heading towards the cashier booths. I turned and rushed down to the stop sign where the van has to exit only to discover that the van was NOT my van. Now I'm in a quandry....do I try to go back up the hill and find the van? What if they leave while I'm up there looking? So I pull out my planner and my handy-dandy contact list and start calling some of riders' cell phone numbers. I'm not getting ANY answers and I thought....I'm gonna have to rent a car or take a taxi just to get home!! Sheesh! It turns out I looked at the wrong column of phone numbers. lol I called home numbers, not cell numbers. Eventually the van did come out after waiting for me and then searching for me on the 2nd floor of the ramp. I figured if I stood there long enough they'd give up and come out so that we could head home. They did, and we all had a good laugh. They're going to revise the phone list tomorrow and move the cell phone numbers into the first column (for me). lol What a day. This doesn't change my decision about the lesson though. From now on, the day before a candidate visit will definitely be a day where I drive myself to work. Even if the only thing I have to do is drop off a revised interview itinerary at the hotel (another mess today), at least I won't have that mass panic about missing a ride home. I was so exhausted and feeling sickly by the time I got home that I immediately took some painkiller (migraine was starting) and crawled into bed.

My recruiting candidate apparently made it to his hotel okay because I didn't receive any frantic calls. Now, if only all of the interviews over the next two days go as smoothly. I know they won't, but I can hope. (I oversee a program that recruits top young scientists in biomedical sciences to the campus. Thus far we've received about 80 applications and only have 2 candidates. VERY competitive. The recruited individuals start their careers in their first faculty position and receive an initial $300,000 to start their lab followed by an additional $300,00 over the subsequent three years to maintain it. After that, the expectation is that they'll be winning grant money to support their work.) I enjoy the work and it lets me explore interactive web sites as well as work with department heads in two colleges. One of my former committee members once told me he thought I was the "most famous" person in the college because I send so many things to the college faculty. I had to laugh but he was right. Because I'm a girl-friday, I've worked on projects in many areas of the office - facilities, research, faculty issues, finance - that people do know my name. However, I don't always know theirs! It's always a bit of a surprise to walk down a hallway and hear "Hello Sonya!" and I reply with "Hello! [tall blond woman that I don't know]".