Last week, to put it succinctly, was the week from hell.

I left for St. Louis to present at a conference on Wednesday, came home mid-afternoon Friday only to immediately head to the Fox Theatre with Justin to see Bob Dylan play Friday night. Saturday morning, after dropping Wednesday off at the dog boarders, we drove to Kalamazoo to see our friends Lauren and Eric get married. Sunday, after a pit stop at IKEA, we headed home where I was able to finally couch for the first time, it seemed, in weeks.

I only checked email twice on Monday. Twice! Clearly, I was tired and overworked.

Justin and I have been having a lot of conversations on what’s going to happen with me when on-campus classes are done for me in May (I’ll still be doing a few online classes for the summer session): I’ll be out of a job (the graduate program kicks students off of student assistantships after 36 credit hours and I hit 42 or 44 May 2010), Justin and I are getting married (to get health benefits – srsly), we’re moving somewhere but we’re not sure where. And then there is the honeymoon to contend with (UK? Italy? For how long?). In a short amount of time, a lot of stuff is going to be happening and I can’t plan for it because it is all dependent on whether or not I get a job offer and if so, where I’m going. And on top of that, if I don’t get a job offer, where do we move to? Justin has the luxury of telecommuting, and I know that if I can’t find a job in X time, he will support me, but I don’t want to have to do that.

It’s called having to pay $900/month in student loans, muthafucker. (“Down with your bourgeois education,” Justin says.)

So then it goes back to, “What do you want to do! What do you want to do with your life!” and of course, “world domination” doesn’t necessarily pay the bills.

In all seriousness though, I stacked my interests and my work experience in the last two years to make myself as marketable as possible. I’ll have 18 months of academic librarianship under my belt, along with having presented at a conference, certification in archival work coupled with practicum experience, digital librarianship, special projects I’ve worked on with professors plus my own incredibly varied background.

I’m awesome and I know that.

One thing I keep musing on is just how far and to what extent I want to make librarianship and archival work my life — because I know me well enough to know that I will rabble rouse and want to change the world (I’ve already started that on campus here with the creation of a new student group that I did with three other students this summer), and while there are many incredibly awesome librarians and archivists out there who do similar rabble rousing things, the profession as a whole can be and is to some extent, incredibly backward and staid. As a student, looking at the work being done typically sums up one thing — that everything has to be committed to death and with that comes the death of innovation and moving forward.

But as par usual, I’m digressing.

As it stands, in addition to my course work and 20 hours of ref desk pimpin’, I currently am doing the following:

• President, ASIS&T,Wayne State student chapter.
• Vice President and co-founder, Progressive Librarians’ Guild, Wayne State student chapter.
• Communications chair, Graduate Employees’ Organizing Committee, Wayne State.
• Member, virtual reference committee for new technologies, Wayne State Library system.
• Digital technologies librarian liaison, various roles/responsibilities ¹.

I can see my life going in a variety of directions, and I know that I’m flexible enough with my skillset that if I don’t like how one way goes, I can totally switch it to another. The problem, however, is that I’m not quite sure if I want to be a rabble rouser anymore — my own work and interests seem to get pushed to the side because when I take on something, I like to think I give it 110% of my focus – and I know it is because of this that makes me so good at what I do.

Writing, for example, has gone to the way side. Not just missing a few days or a few weeks but it’s been since MAY since I’ve posted anything to this or my LiveJournal account, which I even barely check anymore. My other domain, biblyotheke.net is to represent my “professional portfolio” and that’s not even been tweaked with since I installed Indexhibit on it a few weeks ago.

The quandary I’m having is not only how I want to live my life, but how to live my life and make it meaningful. How do I balance a husband, a future family, a career and personal interests while giving myself Lisa-time? What type of jobs should I start looking for? Should I sell out? Consult? Write the “Great American Novel”? Do I want to work 60hrs a week and push family and personal life aside (like my mom)? And if my school involvement right now is any indicator, it can end up like that.

Because I find it incredibly difficult to say “No.”

1. I have not discussed with my freelance employers what I can and cannot post about my work for them, so for now, they remain anonymous.

I’m terribly behind on posting updates and finishing writing nearly a dozen articles that I have saved, but bear with me, the content is forthcoming. I promise

About a month ago, a posting came through my program general discussion list about GSA positions that were going to became available at the P/K Graduate library and the undergraduate library, respectively. GSA (graduate student assistant) positions are paid positions where ones tuition is also paid (almost literally until you graduate from the program) and offers bennies. Thus, you get hourly wage plus free tuition. Being the broke-ass student that I am, I applied for the position and was notified less then two days before the interview that I had said interview. Thankfully my schedule was clear enough for me to pull it off and I did some creative re-arranging with ThePugKids to get them settled while I was gone.

The interview was — interesting.

A week goes by and another email goes out to the general discussion list about library internship availability at the P/K Graduate library. Literally the same position, minus the paid tuition and bennies. I email the HR rep and ask her about applying for this position as I had not heard back from the selection committee yet and she says that’s fine that I can also apply for that position. A few days later, I write my cover letter, attach my resume and reference information and email it to the HR rep and ask her about the status of the GSA position. She returns my email that night (Sunday) within an hour and tells me that unfortunately the positions were filled and that my resume was forwarded to the selection committee for the library internship position.

Clearly, I am beyond disappointed. I was counting on getting the GSA to help me out financially — there were four spots and dammit, I should have gotten one of those! The extra FinAid money that I would have received would have helped me out tremendously in setting up my digs in Detroit and not stress about job worries so much. With the “economic crisis” coupled with the fact that I live in the most financially depressed state in the nation, the probabilities of transferring to $corporate_bookstore across state were looking pretty slim. While I’m sure they would take me on, losing bennies, hours and a pay cut would fucking suck — but I’d do it if it guaranteed me a job until I found another job, preferably one in a library.

The application for the library intern position was due Monday before Thanksgiving. I didn’t have any exceptions on getting the job, the weather has been sucky since we’ve received nearly 12″ of snow in the last week and the stress about trying to get across state for another interview, etc was driving me batshit. I clearly did not have high hopes of even being called in for another interview, the semester is closing in fast and well, I had to come up with another plan.

I was doing homework today when my phone rings and it’s a 313 area code, so I figured it was — someone I did not know. (I’m terribly witty at nearly midnight, can’t you tell?)

It happened to be one of the selection people from my first round of interviews a few weeks back. Turns out that there were only three GSA positions available, not four, and that I was to have been slotted in the fourth spot. They were highly pleased to see my resume for the library intern position and hey, since they already interviewed me and liked me, would I want the library intern position?

I think my “YES!!!!!!!!!” was heard for a six-block radius.

I chit-chat with the librarian coordinator for a bit and she tells me that I have to contact HR to get the paperwork pushed through. No sooner had I hung up the phone with the coordinator, another 313 call comes through, this one from the HR. Could I come onto campus tomorrow to fill in paperwork? The position pays 2x a month but apparently the deadline for new hires to get paid for the first pay period in January is tomorrow. Um, shit. I can make it on Monday when I am on campus for class, but, possibly not tomorrow. She says that’s fine, but that this means my first check won’t deposit until February 4, which I’m totally okay with.

So while we’re on the phone, the HR rep says, “Hey! Great news! They’ve upped your pay by $3 more an hour to be more competitive.” Jesus, I haven’t even been hired for more than an hour and I’ve already got a raise!

The scary part? I’ll be working 20/hrs a week and making the _same_ amount of money as I was making full time at $corporate_bookstore. I’ll still be holding on to the $corporate_bookstore job for 10-15 hours a week until I can find another part-time library position or what have you — but man, while the first few weeks of January are going to be rough, this is so going to be totally worth it!

Quote of the night: “I organize, preserve, index and provide access for all of human knowledge — what do YOU do?”

When I began researching library schools a number of years ago, I couldn’t quite get over the concept of why someone would need a degree in googling and bookshelving. But the more research I did on the programs and the sheer amount of flexibility that library programs gave to future careers, I was ready to be seduced in getting my masters in googling and bookshelving. And I couldn’t help thinking, as time progressed and I started pre-class research and book reading, that perhaps I was a tad righteous in my thinking.

And I love to be proven wrong.

Last nights class, Intro to Library Profession (or baby class 101 as I like to refer to it) dispelled many of mine, and apparently others, myths on the profession. Readings over the summer helped expand my knowledge technology and libraianship, primarily that it was librarians that helped fund and start the first computer databases as a way of organizing and easily accessing knowledge. Yet, at the same time, there is the myth that as electronic cataloging of material grows the fate of the decline of physical libraries keeps growing larger. Not true said the prof, as who else could manage, collate, collect, organize, and index all that electronic information but a librarian. Thus the job market is expanding at an astounding rate as more and more companies and individuals look for someone or something to help keep all of this information in control. The number of people who apply and go to lib school grows as the job market grows and as the job market grows so does the skill sets that lib school provides and teaches.

My prof went on to list what librarians do and what the skill sets are required and as she went through the list, she then demanded us to tell her exactly what company would not love to hire someone who had these specific skills. No one could provide an answer because what it boiled down to was that ANY company would love to hire someone who can provide this incredibly long and flexible skill base. And it is not just in public, academic or even in a traditional library setting — companies are expnading to start their own catalogs, archives, special collections to name a few and who better to organize, index, and provide access to this information other than someone with an MLIS degree? In short: a librarian.

But the image problem comes in, namely, that while librarians were the first on the ball back in the dark ages with working with computers and electronic databases for organizing information, the profession has turned its collective backs to the onslaught of new media (which is slowly being changed as new technologies, classes, workshops and the like are provided to keep skill set fresh). The other problem is the image of the librarian — because when you say you are a librarians, the first thing that comes to mind is a Miss Kerfuffle, 60 years old with her hair in a bun, glasses perched on her noses, constantly telling you to shush in the library. And all Miss Kerfuffle wants to do is read her trashy romance and keep her books in line on the shelves.

My prof talked about a study that was done some time ago (I forget exactly how long) in which a non-biased poll was taken on how Americans viewed themselves. 90% registered themselves as extroverts while 10% registered themselves as introverts. When the same poll was applied to librarians, the opposite was true — 10% were extroverts and 90% were introverts. Again, the problem of PR and marketing is holding true — librarians are constantly getting a bad rap on who and what they do. What is needed, my prof said, was balance. It may be fine and dandy that you love to read and are into doing whatever but this job is a service job and we are here to provide a service to the public. You need, she intoned, to realise that you are providing a public service regardless of the capacity.

The other image issue is the new fangled titling of librarians — information analysts, information architects, information managers and corporate information officers. But what it boiled down to was that at heart, they were librarians underneath the fancy titles. She told us a story of a friend of hers who was at the forefront of information architecture during the dot com boom rage. Her friend made a killing in the area and she joked that if his client base knew he was really a librarian, his pay rate would decrease alarmingly. Because clearly, being an information architect is MUCH sexier than saying one is a librarian.

Another interesting note is that she discussed about Michigan having two library schools when some states did not have even one. She talked about the differences between Wayne and UMich, expanding on why she was ecstatic that we choose Wayne over UMich. She discussed how she often guest lectures at UMich and told us an antidote about a professor at UMich who mentioned to her in passing that when that prof needs employees or students for projects, she comes up to Wayne to recruit, not necessarily within her own school. My prof said that was interesting and asked why that was so to be told that UMich doesn’t necessarily teach the necessary skills for day to day work, rather, the students are more involved in research and development and are being groomed for professor tracks in academia. Having gone over UMich’s website with a fine tooth comb, I can see why this would be true. Apparently, UMich doesn’t teach cataloging anymore, one of the foundational courses that almost every lib school teaches, and of which something you can’t learn on the job. Hence why the UMich prof recruits via Wayne.

Interestingly enough, I’ve heard this time and time again from students AND professors about the friendly rivalry between Wayne and UMich. Some of my classmates have joked that they are going to a high paying technical skills college in order to get jobs. Me? I don’t quite see it way but the disparity between the two colleges does give me more food for thought as I battle on whether or not I should apply to UMich or not.

But that is a story for another time.