When I Grow Up
Once upon a time, I was thinking about going back to graduate school for a degree in library science. Like teachers and doctors, the world always has a need for a librarian. It seemed like a stable job, and I’ve realized over the years that––for me––job stability is connected to job satisfaction. My favourite jobs: the ones that had no end-point and could potentially continue forever. My least favourite jobs: the ones that were always in-flux with layoffs and sweeping changes.
Even if you come through the layoffs, you don’t feel comfortable on the other side. You’re just uncomfortable with a job vs. uncomfortable without a job. Believe me, I’d rather have a job than no job, but I’d also rather be comfortable and in a quiet job than feeling unstable but in an exciting job.
But I spoke recently with a librarian, and she told me all about how often librarians lose their jobs due to budget cuts. So much for that.
I recently came across this interesting post that’s a few years old. The author talks about designing your ideal education plan if money and time weren’t an issue. He writes about how his education plan wouldn’t be based in the classroom, per se, but as I thought it through, I decided that mine would. I would love to be back in a classroom, learning something new.
I would love to get a degree in library sciences. I’d love to study at Oxford and would spend the rest of my life starting sentences with, “When I was at Oxford…” Then I would switch universities and go somewhere else and then somewhere else and then somewhere else, jumping from university to university across the world.
I would take an enormous crate of books with me and spend a year in the Maldives, reading on the water. I would travel, of course, and learn a Scandinavian language properly by speaking it in the everyday world rather than in a classroom. I would apprentice with a mechanic and learn how to fix a car. And then I would apprentice with a zoologist and learn how to care for various animals.
And then when I got back to the normal world, I would settle down in a small town near water that needs a librarian and can promise funding the position for at least the next fifty years. And that’s where you would find me with my wealth of knowledge.
What would you study during your ten-year education plan and what career would you take afterward?
3 comments
I could totally see you at Oxford! The Maldives would be tough though, because of that whole sinking-into-the-rising-seas thing. Ugh, I brought climate change into your educational fantasy… Boooo. I’ve actually thought about becoming a school librarian, it sounds amazing to spend your time with books and research and popping into all kinds of classes through research projects and books talks. But then I also think about starting over in terms of tenure and seniority, and that same “don’t want to lose my job” thought ruins it for me. I did love going to classes, and going to some new school with stone buildings and ivy and reading in new and interesting places sounds amazing.
I often talk with one of our librarians about her budget woes. She’s a director for a library in another town, but works at ours on Saturdays because her library doesn’t pay enough. The town refuses to increase taxes from 20-30 years ago to help with library funding. So she’s applying for grants to…fix the leaking roof. It’s terrible!
I have no desire to return to a classroom. Maybe I’d take a language class or art or something. But I don’t want to have to learn anything new any more (right now, anyway – we’ve had a lot of changes at work over the last 18 months and I feel like I don’t know how to do the job I’ve been doing for 25 years!).
OTOH, I can retire in 5 years and my thoughts are 1) I should learn coding and computer science to create a product to do the stuff that is done terribly inefficiently at work now and 2) I could get a job at our library, so I can work the request system better.
I, too, have often wondered if library sciences would be a good fit for me. I love to know stuff, and I love to know how to find out how to know stuff.
I haven’t given much thought to what I’d like to learn next. In my parenting journey, I’ve needed to learn a whole bunch of new things, and at this time, I am exhausted by the thought of taking on something new. That will probably change in the future, but for now, my 10 year plan doesn’t involve choosing to tackle a new learning project.