Dr. Shellie

As long as I am interviewing, posts are liable to self destruct!

Now that was cool. I just wrote a letter in support of an extremely famous woman professor to get a big, huge award. Since both the professor and the award are way, way more important than I am, it wasn’t a "recommendation" letter but rather an argument for how important she has been to the field and as a role model for younger women like me. In the course of writing the letter I read over her CV and life history and WOW. Very impressive. I mean, I knew that already, but… wow.

Now of course you will be wondering who this extremely famous woman is… but I shan’t tell you! Instead I think it would be fun if people submitted their guesses in the comments. (If you know me in real life, don’t give away my current or former locations!)

Upon checking into my hotel room, I found this message on the voice mail:

Hello Jim. I didn’t know you’d be out of town. Where are you? To tell you the truth, I’m somewhat upset. I looked through the calendar and you don’t have any trips marked. And there is nothing that we talked about, nothing that was coming up. I don’t know where you are or when you’ll be back. I’m kind of worried. Please let me know where you are at some point. Goodbye.

I feel asleep wondering who this woman was who’d left the message. A little too formal to be his wife… yet a little too personal for a secretary… an overbearing mother? A secretary who is also a mistress? And if she didn’t know where he was, why was she calling the number of a hotel– did she misdial his cell phone? Wouldn’t she notice that the voice mail message was wrong?

The restaurants you get to go to on interview trips… so good!