I should have sensed something was up.
By the time I reached Harbord & St. George, just shy of Robarts, I could no longer feel my thighs from the wind chill. I ducked into the University College Union and went to pay a visit to the Dean. We chatted for a bit, talked about her recent trip to the Big Apple, and the fact that this past weekend was Fireball (the huge annual party to commemorate the college burning down on Valentine’s Day 1890). She volunteered to help with clean up as usual and apparently there was a lot of puke, since nowadays the frosh are all underage and don’t know their limits. Cleaning up puke is so NOT in the Dean’s job description. Nona’s such a trooper.
After I’d thawed slightly, I pushed onward to the Faculty of Information Science and snuck behind the reference desk to see E. in his natural habitat. Part Englishman, part Yeti, his cave was littered with books, cataloguing materials and the carcasses of long-dead mugs of tea.
Herding me into a little room, he plunked a few books down before me and said with great frustration, “Okay, little bunny. I can’t stand it any longer. Writing to tell you that you need to become a librarian just isn’t getting through.” Now, apparently, it was time for Plan B. Forcible introduction to industry journals and faculty.
Leaving me alone with current issues of ‘Library Journal’, ‘Quill & Quire’, and a few acquisitions texts for librarians wishing to build their graphic novel collections, he went to make tea. Or so I thought. Moments later, as I was thinking that Q&Q desperately needs a new reviewer for comics – seriously, I could do better than this – he told me to follow him and WHAMO! I was in an impromptu interview with the Inforum Director about joining their graduate studies program. I know that
Couldn’t get to sleep again when I got home. Stayed up until 1am to finish reading ‘Boy Proof’ then tossed and turned all night. Possibly as a result of talking too much about medical things with
If you become a librarian, I will officially know almost nobody who ISN’T a librarian. Weird… eerie.
Don’t mention fascia! The ones in my feet are very angry today.
I promise you that I will never become a librarian. I think the fact that I never know where to put things would severely hamper me in that field 🙂
At this point so many people around me have decided to become librarians that I honestly don’t believe you. Come to me when we’re both 80+ and you’re still not a librarian, maybe I’ll believe you then.
I had to do it. If I’d read one more decent book review, or one more act of pining for graphic novels by obscure authors, I’d have snapped.
I think you’d really enjoy the PhD program here, especially the full scholarship part of it, as well as the ability to get your wee paws on all kinds of books and then wax about them.
In the meantime, I’ll settle for writing WAYNALY everytime you remotelu display librarian-esque behaviour in your blog. Be warned 😉
Don’t you have to be relatively *quiet* in libraries? See…that wouldn’t work for me. I’m fairly certain that you do not need to worry about me 🙂
Though….wait a minute! When I was at CBC I was officially a contract “Media Librarian II”. OMG….I’ve already BEEN a librarian! I’m….so sorry.
We get you in the end…
Plus, quiet only depends on the type of library. If you were a law librarian, you could yell at lawyers and have minions.
SEE?!?
And yourself, have you never felt the siren call of the stacks, the power to send patrons who piss you off to entirely the wrong section of the library, or simply the desire to purchase all the books you want to read on someone else’s dime?
you want to become a librarian…
Oh, I totally used to want to be a librarian. It was Plan A for a good year or two of high school, don’t worry. My only real problem with it — other than the fact that I’m probably too dumb for the schooling required — is that it smacks of customer service, and that means people, which: no.
Still, if this singing thing starts to pale, you know I’ll be calling you up.
i have a friend who was thinking about doing a joint library PhD/law degree program with intellectual property law. somehow i think that might be something that would work for you.
if i said that you would be a good librarian too, would you no longer want to visit me in DC? just checking.
I have to say, I agree with — this does kind of sound like the perfect career for you. It has the kind of stability you crave, and yet it indulges so many of your deeper loves and talents.
I also can’t remember the exact reasons you’ve resisted it, other than the fact that you worked at a library in highschool and somehow it resulted in you vowing you wouldn’t end up a librarian??
Finally, why in the everloving hell so I not have a book-related icon??? I love reading, I write LJ entries about books regularly, I want to design books… this is a huge oversight!
Okay, to set the record straight, there are ALL kinds of librarianship that oddly enough, don’t involve people, or only involve people in related industries (publishing, library supply, faculty members, other librarians). Acquisitions, collection development, cataloguing, archives, etc. The only ones where you have to deal with the ‘public’ are essentially children’s librarianship, information literacy, and pure reference. You may have to occasionally speak with joe public if you’re one of the others, but you can give them the steely-eyed glare of the impatient professional.
Plus you’re already hugely qualified for music librarianship.
nudge nudge, wink wink.
who needs a book icon with that kind of icon? I may have to stop working for a few minutes.
plus, why are you not a librarian either? is the land of graphic design too alluring to look away from?
I really love graphic design. And last night I designed an invitation to a book launch, so there’s even crossover!
The closest I can do is that my mother is a library technician.
You are such a troublemaker. 😉
MR. PERIOD ICON.
*love*
Does he also cause cramps and horrible bloating? If so, I hate Mr. Period.
This is starting to feel like a career intervention.
I know I miss academia sometimes, and I do like books, but… but… what if I don’t like it? This is my problem with “professional” degrees. They teach you how to do a job, rather than giving you vague instruction in “how to think” and general field knowledge like liberal arts degrees do. So when you’re done, you are pretty much compelled to live the life your degree dictates. Gah. Fear!
Plus, I’d be taking a MASSIVE paycut and be losing my fab medical benefits in my early thirties, when in theory I might really need them if/when I decide to make babies. Not to mention the years of having no life while I worked on my thesis.
I’m not so materialistic as to say I couldn’t or wouldn’t return to the student lifestyle and be poor and pensionless if I knew I’d love my job at the end, but I do have a chronic fear of being paid to do something I love. It seems as though it would cheapen it or turn it into a burden somehow. Like JVL’s dad and the Snail – part of owning the country’s biggest comic book store is that he never reads comics anymore. I think he kind of hates them, actually. I don’t want that life. Books cannot become a chore.
Yes, you and I have the same weird friends circle thing where it’s about 50/50 librarians and opera singers.
Except I can never quite pinpoint when and where I met so many opera singers. Why do I know you people? It’s freaking bizarre.
I mean, Meg dated Caius and got me a job. James and therefore you (and Phil and Steve) I met through Caius as well. Aha! So my cousin is a major culprit. Then I guess Mia and Carla were through Meg. Then James through Mia, and Brett and Scott and Stephen through James. Peter through school… WOW I KNOW A LOT OF OPERA SINGERS.
You really do, and it’s very odd of you. 😀 But fun, right? Uh, right?
Butting in, you are SO NOT compelled to do anything a degree dictates. Any professional degree carees with it millions of skills that are transferrable to whatever career your tiny heart, like a little butterly, flits prettily over to when the degree the first couple years in the profession tell you you’ve had enough.
And not to totally discount your last-paragraph fears, I can say from personal experience that in general, being paid to do something you love COMPLETELY RULES.
Arrr, landlubber! This walking-the-plank business, it’s for your own good.
Look, the MLIS is a pretty general degree. You can get a very broad education or you can specialize. I specialized because I liked cataloguing, but I could have just as easily done the ‘How to think like a librarian’ but have vast knowledge of many fields instead. And if you don’t like librarianship, the degree is very, very useful in all kinds of other fields because by and large, you know how to find the answers to questions, or at the very least, where to start looking.
About 30% of our graduates don’t end up doing traditional librarianship (not including the IT loonies). Some wander off to the UN or other NGO’s, some go into publishing or marketing, and some are lured into academia. It’s not a degree that’s a dead end. And if you do do the PhD, you can spend the rest of your life holding court to wide-eyed grad students, making idiotic amounts of money, and buggering off on sabbaticals when it all gets to be too much.
Yes to the pay cut, and yes to loss of benefits for the time you’re doing it (presuming full-time), but the end result is worth it (or at least I believe so).
This is my problem with “professional” degrees. They teach you how to do a job, rather than giving you vague instruction in “how to think” and general field knowledge like liberal arts degrees do. So when you’re done, you are pretty much compelled to live the life your degree dictates. Gah. Fear!
Yeah, but after learning how to think in both undergrad and your masters, how much more “how to think” could you possibly have to learn?
For me (and not necessarily for you), the only reason I would invest more time/money in education at this point would be if it were towards some sort of specific purpose. I mean, would you really want to be an English PhD working as a gov’t admin? Maybe you would, but it seems like an odd use of a lot of hard work, time and money.
Which isn’t to say you should become a librarian, so much as to say that you might want to think twice about taking a more vague degree just to avoid the sense of locking yourself in to something. Really, you’re not more bound to be a librarian after taking your MLS (or whatever they’re calling it these days) than you are committed to being an English professor after getting your English PhD–that is, assuming it’s not like medical or law school where the debt is so deep that unless you embark on that specific career, you’re kind of screwed.
And not to totally discount your last-paragraph fears, I can say from personal experience that in general, being paid to do something you love COMPLETELY RULES.
My experience has been likewise.
Do you *remember* how loud Adrian was? And now we have a piano in the middle of the library, so it’s plink, plink, plink, all day long.
Riiiiight.
(No, seriously, I love the opera folks. They’re so diverse! I get skin and hair care advice, reading recommendations, no-nonsense hard-hitting lovelife and career shakedowns not unlike what is happenening right here, intriguing gossip, free tickets to cultural events, and the married/gay men take me out on “dates” so I don’t become embittered by too many Friday nights alone at home. It’s a good scene.)
I threaten to move to India to live with my aunt in her ashram.
*pet*
Not to discount anything that Ed and the others are saying…it’s just how I respond to interventions. *smooch*
Not to mention the years of having no life while I worked on my thesis
Hey! I resemble that remark.
You aunt and her ashram are still pretty cool choices. If little bunny was to run away from my bullying to that sort of life, it’d be just as good. Though I’d still send here graphic novel guides as temptation.
btw, on an unrelated note, do you ever do commissions?
I do freelance web/print design work, if that’s the kind of commission you’re talking about.
Edward, you’ll be happy to know I paid a visit to the first floor MAG law library today, and met with the librarian, got her card etc.
We’ll arrange for you to come visit some day and have a chat with her about legal librarianship whenever you can make it down here between 9am-5pm.
Or, you can just come in with me, anytime, 24/7 (I have all-hours top clearance access dontcha know!) and we can sit you down with the 24-volume leatherbound ‘Laws of Australia’ set I saw by the reference desk. Whee!
i agree as well. even if i want to kill the kids sometimes, there is never a moment in which i would really want to consider a career change. all the same, ask me again in ten years if you want to know if that still applies.
if you don’t like the PhD after a while, you could also follow in the footsteps of so many others: quit and go home with a Masters. besides, getting an education in a particular field doesn’t restrict you to that area. look at english majors who become doctors, or engineers who end up doing degrees in English literature (i know examples of both).
the world is by no means a limiting place, so go for the possibilities while they are right in front of you! i say explore your options.
And I will say this: Don’t let fear stop you from doing something, that’s really quite stupid. And I know you’re not stupid. What if you hated it, yes; but equally possible, what if you really loved it? And if you hated it, so what? Then you don’t have to do it. You would be able to live your life knowing that you went for it, that you took a chance. You should live with passion, do what you love, take leaps into the unknown. You don’t know what’s going to happen at the end, and you don’t know where the journey will take you along the way. That shouldn’t stimulate fear, that should stimulate excitement!
24 volumes of “The Laws of Australia”? Joy!
Despite the friendly poking and prodding going on here, I really just want you to be in a profession that makes you happy, and on the whole, you look forward to going to in the morning. Librarianship is but one option of many, but it is one that I feel you are uniquely suited for.
Otherwise I’ll see what I can do about wandering down and nattering with your law librarians (and forcing you out to lunch as well).
And maybe, just maybe they’ll have that most exciting book, “The Interpretation of income tax treaties with particular reference to the commentaries on the OECD model”. Heady stuff…
you would make an excellent librarian. just the right amount of whimsy required for running the coolest library on campus. i can just imagine the lines of people out the door wanting to work in your library. i’d be (would have been?) one of them.
when did libraries become so frickin cool?
Man, that argument about the liberal arts vs. professional degrees thing is so damn solid I can’t even put a dent in it. I guess the difference is, while I absolutely don’t *need* any more “how to think” teaching, it’s the kind I prefer above all others (am I educationally commitment-phobic?)
But you’re right… what IS the point of more schooling unless it’s to a purpose other than “read more books” – which is something I can certainly do on my own time at this point in my life. Hmm. Food for thought.
Although honestly, if I finished any kind of PhD, English or otherwise, you better believe I would not be working for the government. Teaching all the way, baybee! I like to spread the good word about things I love to those not in the know, as you may have seen by my recent posts. 🙂
Yes, Yes. See, MoFo? K is right!
Remember: LOVE YOUR LIFE!
That’s not to say that running away to India isn’t an option of course, ’cause even Edward thinks so.
Oh my goodness, that’s right – you worked in a library, too! Ha!
Thanks for the “cool factor” support. As comfortable as I am with being a huge nerd, I must admit that in part the alternate-universe Mary-as-librarian in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ view of the field haunts me. And it doesn’t help that has also dubbed me ‘The Eternal Bachelorette’.
Yes, it’s completely irrational. No, there is no way librarians are less cool than government workers. And yet, there it is. The angry women who shaped my high school experience of library management were about 75% weird, embittered old maids, and even though my many youthful, vibrant friends who are involved in this line of work prove that image to be utterly false (and also‘s mom AND ‘s mom are both ultra-hip fun, friendly adult library techs), I can’t entirely evade the association.
But of course, I’m all about subverting the dominant paradigm, so I have to believe that I could cast off my ‘Eternal Bachelorette’ mantle in favour of the ‘Funky Librarian’ mantle. (‘Sexy Collections Developer’? ‘Anarchist Archivist’? ‘Cool Cataloguer’?)
Dude, seriously, I have SIX MONTHS of sabbatical coming up. You give me the address in India, and I will go pay a nice long yoga-filled visit to Auntie over Christmas.
Bring on the ashram!
According to Sean and Em, it’s stunning. I mean, a quiet village in the foothills of the Himalayas? I’ve seen the pictures.
Of course, if you go, I’ll have to go, too, or I’ll never hear the end of it. 🙂
Did I ever tell you about the time my mom said “You know, I think you’ll be a serial monogamist, but you’ll never get married – just flit from man to man.” ?
Mothers! 😉
Well, maybe your answers to the above questions are telling you that what you really DO want is to get your PhD in English and become a professor?
Mostly, I agree with your cousin — don’t let fear stop you from at least trying a career path that merges your work with things you love. And unlike RVL, you don’t have to tie up all kinds of capital or be the owner of a business to do something you love — that’s probably the source of a lot of the pressure/joy-suck. And consequently, if you’re working as a professor, or a librarian, or at one of the many other careers you might enjoy, you have a lot more freedom to extricate yourself and either go back to the familiar or move on to another new challenge than RVL has had.
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