In the months that I have not been posting, I have started an internship at the Clinton-Macomb Public Library working alongside the Teen Librarian there, then also started an internship at the Plymouth District Library, also doing teen stuff. Every minute of it confirms that getting my MLIS is the right thing for me and being a Teen Librarian is the right career path.
So, for the longest time, I knew some random elements that I wanted to get to do in life/a career, but didn’t really see how they would ever actually fit into a career and assumed I’d have to probably fulfill these needs through multiple endeavors. Those elements included:
- Working on a handful of ongoing, self-directed projects at a sort of weird, broken up pace
- Allowing conversations with people asking for my help to take priority over actual office work
- Planning and execute fun, interesting and/or educational programs/events ranging from small to large
- Being a mentor to teens
- Doing little projects which indulge my obsessive-compulsive tendencies in an overly intricate, yet meditative way, such as alphabetizing things, or going through to make sure one list matches another list exactly
- Reading tons of Young Adult Fiction
- Helping people in small, measurable ways
- Promoting active literacy
I’m not sure why it never occurred to me to be a librarian until I took a Young Adult Literature class in the LIS department at Portland State while pursuing my prerequisites to do a teaching program, but the second it occurred to me, it kind of just clicked. And the thing is, being a librarian equals all those things on the list above, plus more awesome stuff.
A fine example of this was today, when I took this list of what Manga series we have and what is missing that I had been working on for awhile and finally finished (fulfilling my obsessive list making needs) to a couple Borders bookstores that were going out of business to comb through what they had and fill in holes. I’m not personally that interested in reading Manga (mostly because I am functionally illiterate when it comes to reading graphic novels), but both stores we visited pretty much just had Manga and random paranormal romance (read: porn) novels left. So it was kind of awesome to be able to go into one store and buy a bunch of books we actually needed for 90% off, and another store and buy a bunch more books we needed for 4 for $1 (seriously!). Who finds books they need or want when it’s that picked through? Librarians do. Awesome.
Jack Does Library School 
Hooray for being able to fill in the holes! How was the Borders experience for you? Very sad for me…
It was weird, but also kind of exhilarating. it’s weird when a whole giant store and most of the shelves are empty and nothing is organized quite right–it’s kind of fun and chaotic. plus it feels great to get cheap books
A number of my first-semester MLS classmates are still looking for their passion. So glad you’ve found yours!
Thanks! And yeah, working with teens was what i wanted to do way before deciding to go to library school, so i think school has only confirmed what i already partially knew.