Where I’m At
I’ve heard stories about people who spend thousands of dollars on masters or doctorate degrees who feel nothing but contempt and despair towards their fields of choice. They usually end up having jobs that have absolutely nothing to do with their degrees, like the chemical engineer I once knew who ended up starting a coffee shop. I always wondered what happened to these people in the years they were working long, caffeine-infused hours towards their bright and shiny futures. Now I know what happened; somewhere between the labs and paper-writing and RA-ing and ass-kissing, they became sick of the bullshit and realized they couldn’t do this for the rest of their lives. This is the situation I now find myself in.
I graduated with my Masters in Library and Information Science six months ago, and I am highly unmotivated when it comes to finding a job in this profession. I am still working my same, non-librarian job at a local library where I have spent the last nine years putting up with patrons who feel entitled to special perks (like the lady who told me that since she was a taxpayer she should be able to break whatever cd and ruin whatever book she wanted), and will say anything to get out of being responsible for their actions. Add to the mix an administration that pays loads of lip service to helping employees with professional development but in practice does whatever it can to keep this from happening. These days the bad things overshadow the good things for me. I see librarians who think outside the box get their ideas turned down left and right by the powers-that-be, when all they want is to give patrons better service. People try hard not to let their ideas get stuck in Bureaucratic Soup, but most days they just sink to the bottom and dissipate. It’s frustrating to watch, and I want nothing to do with it.
These days I’m brainstorming ideas for what to do with myself. I originally wanted to be a librarian so that a) I could be surrounded by new things to learn and b) I could help people, but there are so many different ways I can meet these goals that don’t involve being stalked or yelled at or having to clean up the urine someone kindly left on a chair.
I’m reading The Anti 9 to 5 Guide to help me figure out what I truly want to do as a career. It’s been interesting reading so far. We’ll have to wait and see where I end up.
I just hope that where you end up is not on the streets of Aurora, selling your lady parts.
I love to hear stories about the stupid things people say. If the taxpayer really believed that, why did she ever bother to bring anything back to the library? If she “paid for it” why wouldn’t she just keep it? What a dumbass.
Good luck in your career search. Although by selling your “lady parts” you would undoubtedly learn new things and help people, I would leave that out as a last resort.
Shame on the library for being such an unsatisfying place to work! To show my support of you and my disapproving rabbit face to them, I shant pay my fines. So there! stick that in your book drop! HA!
First paragraph . . . er . . . um . . . yeah. Ding ding ding. Not to mention that most of your tenured or tenure-tracked academics in more competitive universities really are deluded assaholics. Little things like practical utility, actual helpfulness, and clear communication with locally present humans not also in a similar position in academia are “beneath them.”
Imagine if you decided to “help people” not with a Masters in something more practical and universally applicable, but with a Ph.D. in something far more preposterous like . . . Clinical Psychology? Nah, I’m sure no one you would bother to know would ever have engaged in anything THAT absurd. But of course not!
One little chunklet of advice I’d give you (not that you asked, but I’m posting it anyway) is that if you’re seriously considering a big change, do attempt to disentangle what aspects of your frustration are specifically library, and what aspects just MIGHT be more generically any large bureaucracy. Like . . . getting interesting ideas stuck in Bureaucratic Soup, in my experience, generic bureaucratic bullshit. Hard to be committed (take that last word for all its’ definitions) to any large one and avoid it. That urine thing . . . maybe less generic. Maybe. But only if we’re strictly speaking literally, not at all metaphorically.
fwiw, my masters-in-library-science-friend heads a library for a big law firm and is really, really loving her job. she’s been sent europe a few times as well as conferences. she went there after working here.
just saying…you got options other than a library.
andrea (surfed here from lizzielou’s blog)