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A new year. A new post. The majority of the following was written on December 17th...]
So the first semester of Library School ended for me yesterday, and I don't think that I've really mentioned it at all here.
Last Fall, when I was subbing, I had these second thoughts about teaching. Well, actually, all through my program I had second thoughts. One of my classmates and I would talk about how classroom teaching wasn't really where we saw ourselves ending up - we were both thinking about either counseling, or administration [wouldn't I just make the GREATEST principal??] - but teaching just seemed like a means to something else. Well, this classmate is very wise and spiritual, and she would say to me, "You know, maybe you should look at what else your skill set can do for you. Maybe you could get some other kind of job using the stuff that you've learned..." Subbing last Fall, I was drawn to the libraries that were in the schools that I went to. A couple of times, I even cornered the people working those libraries, and asked if I could talk to them about their experiences after school. At Bryant, I walked past the school "library" [it was kind of a big open space on the second floor with some shelves and books...] many times a day and thought, "Now THAT is the coolest job to have in a school." I asked the "librarian" [she was really just an unqualified paraprofessional] her story, she was cagey about giving me too much information, and then we became buddies. Occasionally, when I didn't want to do anything else, she'd have me reshelve books. It was calming. That was when I started looking into Library programs in the state, and what it would take to become a librarian.
Last Spring, I started volunteering 3 hours a week at our local library branch. I got to sit in the children's room and help kids use the computers. There was actually a 2 1/2 hour "training" session that I had to go to before I started. That 2 1/2 hours boiled down to 2 simple rules: 1. Don't do anything inappropriate with the kids, and 2. If the computer freezes up, hit [CONTROL][F12].
There I sat, bored out of my mind, but got to talking to a part time librarian who worked in the children's room. She was my age, and had finished the Masters of Library and Information Sciences program at
San Jose State that I was looking into. While bored [the computers RARELY froze up, so every half hour I would just have to kick one group of kids off the computers, and let another group on...], it was still fascinating to talk to this woman about her experiences and watch her and the other full time children's librarian [who, by the way, was AWFUL] at work. They would greet their regular [latchkey!] kids every week, help kids find books and answer reference questions, plan for story hours, work on getting the weekly craft time materials together, suggest books to kids, do themed displays - it was wondrous. It was perfect. It was a dream. And, as I've been saying ever since, it seemed like it was more my speed.
I watched those teachers at Bryant. They got to school at 7am, and most of them didn't leave until 6 or 7pm. Plus, a lot of them came in on weekends - not to mention how much work they did while at home. The school day itself is exhausting as well - I mean, you are in control of 20 kids for 7 hours and must ALWAYS be "ON". It's not the life I want - I need "me" time, and teaching doesn't allow you very much of that. Librarians, however, get some down time here and there, get to sporadically help kids find stuff, have time alotted to read and review literature, read professional journal articles, do displays, do storyhours, and don't have the constant pressure of constantly being onstage.
Oh, so, because of my experiences, I decided to go for it and applied to San Jose State University's Masters of Library and Information Sciences program - and then got in. Initially, I thought that I would probably like to work in a school library, but since starting work at the public library in town [another thing I don't think that I've mentioned here...], it looks like I'm gearing up for working in a Children's collection in the public library setting. Public librarians can still act as teachers to kids...
Brian and I did nothing this past summer except hang out together, bought a car, hiked around a lot, and had a bunch of fun.
Over the summer, a guy that I used to work with at Borders let me know that the Page pool was opening up for the San Francisco Public library [which they do only once or twice a year, and if you don't get an application in during that time, well, you can't get a job there...], so I put in my application for one of these 15 hour a week jobs. Quite luckily, this woman who worked in the children's room at my local library branch [where I volunteered] had worked at the Main Library and knew that they were going to be hiring some Pages, so she told them about me, I got an interview, and WAS HIRED. So, yeah, it is a 15 hour a week position working in the Borrower Services department - basically, I check books out to people, check books back in, collect fines, and sign people up for library cards. Honestly, I LOVE IT. It is SO much fun chatting with library patrons all day, seeing what they check out, etc. The library environment is just so peaceful and calming and just brimming with knowledge. It's impressive to think about how I am surrounded everyday by so much information and creative expression - just being in proximity of so much information makes a person smarter.
More specifics to come...
