Summer Daze

So, this morning I had an interview at 8 a.m. for a full-time position at one of my high schools.  One of our full-time librarians retired this spring and I was encouraged to apply for the job.  I walked away from the interview feeling like I had given it my best effort and I was secure in the knowledge that even if I didn’t get offered the full-time position, I would still have a truly wonderful job going between the two high schools full-time.

At about 1 p.m. this afternoon I got a job offer and I took it.

This phone call came just as I was arriving to have cupcakes with a fellow-librarian and grad school classmate and just after I had left my mother’s office where she was helping me sort out the equivalencies between my grad school quarter credits from the University of Washington and the semester credit requirements attached to the University of Montana-Western Library K-12 Minor program, from whom I am taking a few classes and garnering institutional sponsorship for my OPI Library Endorsement while I finish the endorsement.  Yeeeesh!

This means that my own work situation will be radically altered when school starts up again in the fall but so too will be the position I am vacating.  Add to this the fact that the library is undergoing major renovations this summer (all the floor-to-ceiling windows that run the length of the library are being replaced–it’s not a small job) and we will have to put everything back together in the fall as swiftly as we can in order to start delivering Freshman orientations and we have ourselves quite a busy road ahead.  Frankly, I feel like I’m caught in a whirlwind!

I’m more than a little nervous about this change in position and all that it entails, especially since, starting on Monday, I won’t be back in town until 2 days before I have to report for the start of the school year.  I wouldn’t be able to get in the building until then anyway, so I’m not so bent out of shape about that aspect of the situation.  More to the point, I plan on needing and utilizing the kind support offered by my fellow librarians in the district and in my library to cope with this change and I won’t be able to interface with them in person until then, at which point we’ll all be crazy busy getting ready for the start of the year!  I plan to try and Skype with them a few times at least this summer while I’m off in Internship Land, and thank heaven for cell phones and email, but still!

I’m honored to be selected for this position.  Please don’t mistake my bewilderment and dismayed ramblings for anything other than the natural anxiety of a perfectionist being faced with an unforeseen series of challenges.  Still, I have to wonder, does anyone remember when summers used to be about relaxation and, dare I say it, even boredom?

 

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Internships: The Bane and Boon of the Graduate School Game

Yes.  It’s been an age since last we met here.  I found multiple subjects for blogs throughout this past school year and realized almost immediately that actually addressing those subjects in a public forum would open me up to both ridicule and censure.  I live in a relatively small town, and even if I didn’t the professional community in which I exist on a daily basis is pretty insulated.  This can be very supportive but it can also lend itself to a degree of judgement and oversight that render me uncomfortable with sharing my opinions on certain matters without anonymity.  And I refuse to go anonymous on this blog.  I am proud of my profession and my opinions.  I just also have a smidgen of self-preservation.  Hence my reticence to post all year.

There.  I said my semi-apologetic spiel.  On to “postable” material!

It occurred to me back in January or February that this will be my last summer as a graduate student.  Dear God, please please please let this be my last summer as a graduate student!  A combination of full-time work, geographic distance, and a general tendency toward shyness have rendered my extra-curricular involvement in both my graduate program and my field pretty nonexistent.  I figured this summer would be an ideal opportunity to do something useful and career-enhancing (and potentially one of the last such opportunities I’ll have in a long time).

I had missed the deadlines for many internships.  For instance, I was keen to apply for an internship at the CIA, but the deadline is incredibly early.  Future Spook-internship-seekers, take note!  I ultimately ended up applying for four internships: three with the Montana Historical Society and one through the University of Washington at the San Francisco Zen Center.  The MHS ones all came back as a polite “Thanks, no thanks” but I was accepted for the SFZC!  I’d heard about this program through a former coworker (and iSchool alum) so I was understandably very excited to get to go.  I started making plans for a month in San Francisco when I got an email last week from MHS saying that it turns out they have enough funds for another internship and would I like to spend 6 weeks in Helena this summer?  Yes!

What followed was an astounding flurry of emails that ended with me booked on flight from Billings to San Francisco on June 17, another flight from San Francisco to Seattle on July 11, and a plan to drive in to Glacier National Park with my family for a weekend before turning up in Helena on July 15 to work at MHS until August 23.  Guess when I have to report back for the start of the school year: August 26!

Holy.  Moly.

To clarify: I am a horrible home-body.  My friends lament that I don’t like going out.  I don’t like partying late into the night.  Sleep deprivation makes me weepy and depressed.  I would rather enjoy a movie marathon than go camping.  Frankly I would rather do just about anything than go camping!  And I have a disturbing history of severe homesickness.

I will not be home between June 17 and August 23.

To say I’m feeling a bit stressed out and overwhelmed right now would be a wild understatement!

And yet, I consider it a sign of personal growth that, shining through the muck of fear and apprehension, the incredible honor and opportunity I have this summer remains ever-present in my mind.  For one thing, I get to go to San Francisco!  I’ve never been to the city by the bay and, by all accounts, it is thoroughly amazing!  I get to see Chinatown and Alcatraz and the wharf!  And, lest we forget, I get to study at one of the foremost centers for Zen Buddhism in the West!  I am going to learn more about meditation and focus and “working with both hands.”  Frankly, I cannot wait!  Then, I get to spend time with my family in one of the most beautiful places on earth and, incidentally, another place I’ve never been before.  And I get to do all of this over my birthday!  Wahoooo!  And, as if that weren’t enough, I get to go to still one more place I’ve never been (and I am appropriately ashamed to admit it).  Helena is the state capital of Montana.  I’ve lived in Montana, on and off, since 1994, and I’ve never been there.  Lame!

In both San Francisco and Helena, I will have the opportunity to learn about archival practices, digitization, and preservation.  I may even get to learn a smattering about art restoration.  Because of the online delivery of my graduate program, these are all practices I’ve missed out on learning.  It’s not like a professor in Seattle is going to demonstrate the proper care and keeping of a rare document over a webcam with exhortations to “be careful!” when dealing with such delicate items.  Please!  This aspect of librarianship is one that has always fascinated me and one that I am particularly eager to delve into, and now I have the opportunity to do so under the direction of first-rate minds in environments dedicated to the exploration and preservation of learning.

I am well and truly honored.

I am also freaking well and truly out!  But I know I can survive this summer, and likely even thrive.  My resolution is to keep up a running blog commentary (hopefully with pictures, too!) at both my internships this summer.  If all goes according to plan, it won’t be another 6 or 8 months before I post again!

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Back from Hiatus

I can’t help but feeling shamefully behind the times.  I apologize for the huge break in posts.  As promised, I moved back to Montana and spent the summer teaching and finding my version of High Plains sea legs again.  Mostly, however, I spent the last month and a half helping care for my new little brother.  Seven years ago, my aunt and her partner adopted a baby they had been fostering and they asked my parents to be his guardian.  They were honored, as anyone would be, and so agreed.  Guess what folks: sometimes you end up following through on that promise.  In the last year, this little guy has lost both of his mothers from illness.

Now, what does this have to do with librarianship, you may ask.  Neither of my parents is a librarian and raising a child is hardly the same thing as working in a library.  In many ways, the two are diametrically opposed.  However, I just spent my first day working in the Senior High Library and I can tell you the similarities are striking tonight.

This recently made the rounds through my grad school Facebook page: 

I could feel us all nodding violently in front of our monitors when I saw this.  For those who believe librarians have a cushy job just hanging out with books all day, I beg to differ.  We may look like we’re not stressing and that we’re just having a great time but that’s only half true.  We are having a great time because we’re getting to do what we love.  Being in the library today was exhilarating, despite my first-day disorientation and current bone-weary exhaustion.  It’s a wonderful environment in which to work!  However, don’t let our enjoyment fool you.  We get stressed out just like any other profession.  Today, we worked incredibly hard cleaning and setting the library to rights.  This job was complicated by the fact that the entire building had its windows replaced this summer, its wiring redone, and its hvac system worked on.  Moreover, no faculty have been allowed in the building until today because of the construction.  School starts in two days.  The usual disarray that greets teachers and librarians prior to the start of school was magnified by these circumstances.  That said, we dusted, we vacuumed, we hooked up computers, we reshelved, we checked in books, we set up for two meetings, and we did it all with the understanding that our efforts would ultimately provide our teachers and our students with an invaluable resource come Wednesday.

Some teachers were already taking advantage of our services because one whole side of the school was without Internet all day and finding a printing venue was a challenge.

Tonight, I’m not going to lie, I am ready for my shower!  My back hurts and my knees are raw from shuffling along on industrial carpet to put books back on low shelves.  To me, it’s all been worth it.  Regardless of the level of appreciation voiced by our patrons (and I know they do appreciate us), we gave at the office today and we did it for them and that is an incredibly rewarding feeling.

I see my parents in their struggles to reorient themselves to active parenting.  I see myself in my struggles to understand and positively interact with a 7-year old while helping him deal with the enormous changes in his life.  The overwhelming amount of work and effort this summer has wrought in my personal life did a remarkably good job preparing me for this first day.  In helping raise my little brother, I have a better appreciation for my profession and, in delving head-first into my profession, I have a better appreciation for child-rearing.  The struggles are great and the recognition may be underwhelming, but the worth derived from it by those involved will ultimately prove immeasurable.

And while I’m not ready to have kids of my own just now, I think I have a more tender (and, frankly, more realistic) understanding of my job now in light of today’s revelations.  For the time being, the libraries will be my children.  And they’ll be well turned-out if today’s been any indication!

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Your Parking Has Been Validated

Splendid news!  I got a call this morning from Billings Public Schools offering me a full-time librarian position starting this fall.  I feel like my parking has been validated in the biggest way possible.  I have been applying for jobs, on and off, for the past 3 years.  This is the first time, however, that I got a call back for an interview for a librarian position.  Also, and I cannot stress this enough given the current economic climate, this will be my first salaried position.  I have been an hourly employee since I was 15 years old.  Having the security and stability of a salaried position with benefits is such a relief!  And now my speculative blog handle is no longer speculative.  It’s the real deal!

I am so excited about this!  I will be splitting my time between two high schools, so I will have a tremendous opportunity to observe the differences between the two libraries.  I know I will be incredibly busy.  I have been rather spoiled my first year of grad school, as I have had to work comparatively little and have had a great deal of time to devote to my studies.  Starting this fall, I see a hurricane a’coming.  But, frankly, I am ready to throw my arms wide and embrace the storm.

I won’t be taking any classes this summer, unless I do so through the University of Montana-Western as part of their OPI internship program.  I have been so impressed with their willingness to help and their responsiveness to my inquiries regarding their program.  I sense future blog posts on this subject, that’s for sure!  This means my summer will be spent reading, reading, reading from journals and books on school librarianship.  I plan to plumb the depths of the ALA website for advice and exciting happenings.  I know I’ll be spending quite a bit of time at the Rocky Mountain College library, undoubtedly picking the brains of the spectacular librarians there.  All in all, it promises to be a great challenge and an even better opportunity.  It IS possible to get librarian jobs, my friends!  It DOES happen!

So, bring on the hurricane!

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