Keeping options open

There are several obstacles in my ongoing career discernment, one of which is that I revisit earlier decisions and sometimes change my mind. In January, I went to an open house at the one ALA-accredited library science program in the greater Adventure City area and, as I blogged at the time, decided that Marian the Librarian I wasn't.

But then, yesterday, an email listserv I'm on, which specializes in nonacademic careers for Ph.D. folks, started running a week-long discussion on library careers, and I have found it really interesting reading. One of the things that made the biggest difference for me was having several of the invited panelists say quite frankly that of course library school was kind of tedious but that a library career itself was quite wonderful. And suddenly I realized that I'd been so turned off of the whole library idea because the course descriptions for the local program just sounded so horribly boring. But that's just a year or two of one's life, and what if the career after that was fabulous?! And it's not even like law school, which I hear is just hideous but is nothing like being a lawyer; those classes are damned hard! But from what I'm hearing on this email list, library school classes are boring in an overly practical way but aren't really hard per se, especially for someone who's gone through other kinds of graduate training. Not that I'm already thinking of blowing off the work for classes -- hardly, especially for someone who's always seeking the next gold star from authority figures! -- but it is telling about the workload that students usually work at least half-time and often full-time while going through the program. And one does actually learn useful things that are helpful for librarians' actual jobs, so one could simply grin and bear it for not really that long.

So I thought that maybe it was worthwhile revisiting the question of being a librarian. I thus went back to the website of the local program, only to discover that the deadline for application for fall is ... March 1! How could I do real discernment in so short a time and figure out whether this is simply a temporary enthusiasm or is a valid reassessment of my career goals?

After panicking for a few minutes, I quickly decided that the thing to do is to keep my options open for as long as possible. And so I have now applied to library school; it cost $71 to order transcripts and apply and all the rest, but I figure that's a relatively small cost to buy myself some breathing room and make some clearer decisions.

One compromise I did make, both because of the quickly approaching deadline and my inability to decide what exactly it is that I want to do next: Instead of asking references to write a specific letter for my library school application, I simply used my dossier of letters that I used for my job search in the fall. I first made sure that this was acceptable, of course, and I don't know to what extent it will count against my application that my letters don't mention library school at all. I addressed this slightly odd situation in my personal statement, so perhaps it will be fine.

So for 36 hours now, I've been wandering around in a highly romantic daydream, picturing myself working in a college library, helping scholars in an archive, teaching bright undergraduates how to find the perfect source, working with faculty and IT specialists to create digital archives of our holdings ... the whole nine yards. And it's been a really nice daydream. And even the daydream about what next year would look like -- taking classes and working in a local university library (which is how the year is shaping up in my mind's eye) -- has been really great. For maybe 24 of those hours I've been convinced that this is My Path.

And then, right after getting my acknowledgement that my online application was well and truly received, I checked the secondary school job listings and found a really great-sounding job in a neighboring town. And suddenly I've remembered that high school teaching was going to be My Path. Plus I've been really jazzed about my research for the last few days and had been thinking that certain kinds of writing were perhaps My Path.

Dagnabit!

So I'm going to apply for this high school job, and I'm going to keep checking the MLA listings (I've got two applications out right now), and I'm going to wait and see on my library school application, and I'm going to keep plugging away at this latest writing project. In other words, I'm keeping options open and not closing down any paths at the moment.

At some point I assume I'll have to make a decision and choose a path. But for right now, these are all My Potential Path, and I'm bearing in mind that I don't necessarily need to choose just one. Maybe I can be a woman of many paths. Or of none -- I'll just skip around in the grass off the beaten path. Of course, there's the little problem of how grass-skippers actually make money to pay the bills, but that's a problem for another day.

Comments

[Flavia]

WN, I have two friends who went to library science school (and a third who is there right now)--one is the director of a public library in Grad School State, and the other is a reference librarian at a university in Adventure City (and she got her degree from what I believe is the best-known library program in that same city). They've been librarians for about 8 years and 3 years, respectively.

I'd be more than happy to put you in touch with either or both of them, if that would be useful to you.

[Tiruncula]

Cool potential paths! I've posted a bit more about my library experience and my own potential paths over at my place.

[Tiruncula]

Oh, and thank you for the pointer to that listserv!

[AAYOR]

"Dagnabit?"

Are you my Grandpa?

;-)

[hilaire]

I loved reading this for the feeling of possibility!

[Medieval Woman]

All of these irons in the fire are so exciting - I think you're doing all the right things to yield something potentially very fulfilling to you - keep us posted!!

[Another Damned Medievalist]

I think my cousin just finished an MLIS and is working and teaching pt at Pitt. I could put you in touch with her, or my friend the Librarian, who is incredibly cool. And DV's wife was always one of our heroes in grad school. She's totally cool and together and could keep DV in his place, and she ran one of the big campus research libraries, published, presented, and made more than he did!

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Sorry, I'm way late commenting on this, b/c recently when I haven't been blogging, I haven't been reading, either. If you'd like to hear any more about LDH and his continuing adventures, just let me know - he'd be more than happy to e-chat with you. (For instance, it's become clear to him that he could pretty easily keep teaching in the neighborhood, if he wants to.)

but overall - yeah, keeping your options open is the way to go!