25 years in the same job is nothing special

But she does not think that those 25 years are worth drawing attention to.

- I have colleagues who have been here for more than 30 years, she explain, and tries to make it sound convincing that she is still new to the job. A job where she has control over everything, from the big picture to the small details, from her office with dozens of ring binders all in orderly rows.

In the 1970s, Karen Cauthery was employed at the check-in desk at SAS in Copenhagen Airport, so even then she was making sure that everything went according to plan. One day she gave in to her own wanderlust and boarded a plane to England, where she lived for a number of years and developed a lifelong love for the culture, language and nature of the British Isles. Later, she moved to Andorra with her then husband until she thought it was time to come home to Jutland and get herself an education. Karen Cauthery studied to become a bachelor in business languages in English and Spanish, and after passing the exam in 1991, she had actually planned a relaxing summer vacation. It was, however, cut short when she by chance came across a job advertisement which sent her to Funen and the job as Department Secretary at the former Department of Physics.

The job's duties, and also the technology, were considerably different then from what they are today. For instance, she could receive handwritten research articles which she had to type out on a typewriter. And since those types of machines were equipped with the Danish alphabet and did not account for physics' love of Greek symbols, Karen Cauthery worked out a method for quickly changing the letter ball in the typewriter so the articles could have alpha, beta and gamma in the right places. However, the typewriter was soon replaced with a computer, and today there are two screens standing on the tidy desk.

The Department has also changed over the years. Karen Cauthery remembers the time when there were only six TAP employees at the Department of Physics. But when the Department was later merged with Chemistry, that number increased substantially. It was something of an upheaval because both the culture and the working procedures were different, but she thinks that the TAPs were particularly quick at establishing good relationships with each other and creating a good working environment at the merged department. Today, Pharmacy is also part of the Department, which has grown to around 170 employees, including the centres. Karen Cauthery's worklife has therefore continuously been under development, and her boss - the Head of Department - has changed 11 times. Nevertheless, she hopes that Frants R. Lauritsen is here to stay, and with an impressively quick search in the computer's archive she reveals that he was employed in March 2012. Today she is relieved that the four-year renovation of the laboratories is over and that the department has gained the bright, covered courtyards, including FKF Square (the Banqueting Hall with the chandelier) where there is enough space for all of the staff to be together.

Karen Cauthery does not think that the job has presented any great landmark events. Instead, she highlights everyday life at the Department, where she has colleagues of over 20 different nationalities who constantly bring new impressions and challenges. And when she needs a different kind of challenge, she cultivates her interest in genealogy. She has succeeded in tracing a branch of her family back to the 1740s. At the moment, she is looking for a particular letter from the 1920s, which requires a certain degree of detective work searching through an infinite amount of archives. A task to which she will no doubt apply herself with the same care and systematic approach with which she has influenced the Department in her only 25 years in the job.