It’s hard to believe an entire semester is already past. Today was meant to be my last day of classes, but with the storm here in Boston, most of the universities and colleges are closed and my class was canceled. Sort of anti-climactic.
When I think about the past four months, it strikes me how different my life is, and not just in the way I spend my time, but the way I think and what I think about. I feel as though I’ve stepped into an entirely new world, with a new language and new ideas and theories, and it requires all of my time and thought to understand it all. It’s not that it’s particularly difficult or challenging, but rather that you can’t be only halfway involved. As though libraries become your identity, somehow. And all of this sounds kind of cultish and unappealing, but I love it.
Some of my experiences this semester have been frustrating, yes. And I’m certainly not going to claim that library school, library science, librarianship in general is perfect–there are a lot of issues and problems within the field as it struggles to keep up with a changing information landscape. But because of that, this is a really exciting time to be involved.
And what is most exciting for me are some of the personal changes I’m noticing. I never considered myself a leader before, or a joiner, for that matter. I wasn’t into activities or organizations in high school or college, or in my professional life. But I made a conscious decision when I came to school to get as involved as I could, and after only one semester I can see what a huge difference that makes in the ways that I interact with others and the things I believe myself capable of doing. I keep joking to the boy that it’s easy for someone as shy and nondescript as myself to stand out among a group of librarians. (And yes, I am still allowed to be deprecating about librarians, even more so now that I’m going to be one.)
So I jumped into grad school head first and after one semester of frantic (and not-so-frantic) paddling, I like to think that I’ll be able to really contribute things to this profession and to my peers. And it’s been a long time since I felt like that, so at least we all know something good will come out of the $60,000 debt.
Now for five weeks of vacation.