Tapping into the network

[resonant]

Or: Who wants to help the Res decide what she wants to be when/if she grows up? (Not cutting because I want maximum input, but I'll try to keep it brief.)

I've been doing the exercises in What Color Is Your Parachute, and have ended up with a list of transferable skills and a list of interests.

Skills:

Analyze
Solve problems/see patterns
Evaluate
Imagine/invent
Classify/organize
Plan

Interests:

Social sciences
Design of spaces
Communication studies
Folklore
Speculative fiction
Libraries

The next step is to ask everyone I know: Do these suggest any job titles to you? Do they suggest any job fields to you?

The best job I ever had was one that I didn't know such a thing existed until I found myself interviewing for it, so I'm very open to unexpected suggestions from you brainy and extremely diverse people. (Please feel free to share this post; I'm very interested in advice from everyone, whether I know them or not.)

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

Well, just to give you some unusual suggestions, I would want someone with that skill set to work on the following aspects of my job:

Conference organization and design (everything from organizing the poster presentation and board organization to ordering catering to communicating with the speakers to creating the abstract booklet).

There was a man who worked in the library at my graduate university who was the administrative go-to guy for getting your dissertation thesis bound and sent to the right departments/copies placed properly in the library. I always thought that would be a nice job description since all those students would be so damn happy to be talking to you.

A lab manager. Now, you didn't list my kind of basic science as an interest, so I don't know how much this would apply, but the psych program is also constantly running studies that require room and equipment set-up, so. We would have a lab manager doing a lot of the prep work for experiments, organizing specific frozen samples, doing a lot of the paperwork involved in ordering and receiving, and trying to stay a step ahead of the researcher's needs. I would imagine that a social studies experiment would involve signing up and organizing the participants. In my current university, there is a web-based sign-up system, but we all get reminders and study participation eligibility emails. I've usually known lab managers to have a master's in the field, but I'm in a very specialized field.

The administrative departments in general usually have a front man for lecture room sign-ups, organization of announcements, food and drink and any meal planning. These events could always, *always* use someone to solve the problems inherent in the system and make it work better.

In any case, in academia and elsewhere, someone with organizational skills is a blessing. No matter the field.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I found that I reacted to the conference-organization suggestion with a visceral self-protective curl -- I think it's because it's organizing people, rather than organizing information. But I'd have to talk to someone who actually does the work to get a better sense of what it's really like.

Lab manager, on the other hand, sounds really interesting. And I am very interested in science; I just have no education or training in it.

Would you mind telling me more about what you do? (You can e-mail resonant8(at)sbcglobal(dot)net, if you like that better than a public LJ post.)