Career Update

When last we talked about jobs, I was a Toddler Teacher at a preschool. When the Husband and I were preparing to move to Vermont, I was ready for a decision: is it more important to me to work with kids or in a library? As it turned out, the decision was actually: do I want to take a job at a preschool or do I want to stay unemployed indefinitely? I took the path that allowed us to buy food.

I knew that I needed to find a way out when I was at a bookstore talking to the salesperson and said, "I used to be a librarian," and the past tense made me cry. (Yes, literally, though not until I left the store.) And so it was a great relief when a library job opened up at an institution of higher education. Since I've still not decided exactly how easily Google-able I want to be in this blog iteration, I'll just say that it's a specialized sort of tech school and leave it there.

As with even the best jobs, there is some weirdness mixed in.

First, it's personally weird for me to not only not be a children's librarian, but also to not be a public librarian.

Second, though I am technically an academic librarian, my institution is a tech school. Practically speaking, that means I am in a subculture of academic librarianship. My institution is focused on the teaching of a set of skills, and thus isn't focused on in-depth research. Honestly, I prefer that, because most of the people here genuinely care about teaching their craft. (If they didn't, they could go out into the world, and just, you know, do their craft.) It does mean, though, that most of the articles written about my general field aren't applicable to me. This is a disappointment because boy, do I love a professional article.

Third, I am working for the largest organization I have ever worked in but I am a sub-department of one. There are, of course, other professionals providing academic support, but there are no other professionals providing library support. Combine that with number two, and sometimes I feel lonely.

Finally, I live in an awesome little town that has a vaguely college-y vibe. As with any college, there are some people who graduate from the school, but never really graduate from the town. They kind of hang around in limbo, and their limbo involves coming to the library to read magazines and "do research". So even though I don't work in a public library, I still have reference desk stories. But the pool in this town is so small that I can't share any of my stories here.

Really, though? Those things pale in comparison to going each day to an institution whose work I genuinely support and who seems to genuinely value what I do. Which isn't funny or particularly interesting to read about, but it's true, so there.

Rebirth of the Blog

So, I've been kicking around the idea of bringing back the blog. The hardest part of bringing back the blog, though, is writing the first post. You know, the one where I explain where I was and what I was doing and why I haven't been writing the blog? I'd start it in my head, but then I'd start to think about the fact that Google Reader got shut down, and probably all two of the people who followed me didn't transfer their subscriptions, and anyway, isn't there a new Sherlock trailer to find on the internet?

Then, along comes this article to kick me out of my no-bloggy funk. Go ahead, you can read it. It's short! Wait, who am I to come into your house after a year of silence and make you read NPR articles? Fair point, dear reader. I'll sum up:

You know how at the beginning of calls to customer service, they usually tell you that the call might be recorded for training purposes? And you either forget about it, or at least assume that they aren't referring to the parts where they're playing a Muzak version of "The Boys of Summer"? Well, they're totally recording the whole thing! And they used the recording to judge you!

The study in the article looked at two things: how much people on those calls sweared, and whether they said "please" and "thank you". As a Hoosier, albeit a misplaced one, I was filled with all of the conflicting emotions my homeland usually gives me when I saw Indiana smack dab in the middle of the "Least Courteous" list, while not ranking at the top or bottom of the Cursing list. Hoosiers!We will not curse at you when you make us wait, but neither will we say "thank you" if you end up helping us! We made passive aggressiveness into an art form, you sons of a biscuit!

I should note that Vermont didn't make it onto the list. I don't know what that says. Vermonters are neither repressed enough nor rude enough to make headlines? I didn't get all "social science librarian" with the article, so it could just say that they didn't adjust for population, leaving the second least populated state with little chance of ranking. Who knows?

All of which is to say, I decided to skip the "What I Did on My Blog Vacation" post. Suffice to say, I'm still here, in Vermont, but I'm still thinking about the Midwest. More to come soon, I promise.