Catching Up

Phew. The impending arrival of finals week gives me a minute to breathe and compose a post. Of course the knocking on my office door from frantic students looking to find me does hamper the writing somewhat.

I can’t believe that my first quarter as an academic librarian is coming to a close. I have been following the First Year Librarian posts over at ACRLog and am relieved to see that many of my experiences are very normal.

First, there is the ever-present inability to go the heck home at the end of my shift. It’s not as though I mean to stick around the library for umpteen extra hours–it’s just a really long walk from my office to the door and any number of things are likely to occur on the way. Some examples include printer jams, discussions of cafeteria-induced food poisoning, who threw away whose perfectly good milk, and the occasional friendly chat with that one lunatic faculty member who does that thing with the thing. Imagine that I am, right now, making shifty eyes at you.

This relates to item the second, gossip. Gossip exists in various forms in all libraries, in all departments. I am learning to try to steer clear of this as much as possible. It doesn’t help that everyone knows I am funny and I like to talk– I suppose I seem like the natural choice for sharing gossip. I’m not, it pretty much goes in one ear and clatters around in there until I stuff enough other crap in after to consume the space.

I am horrified and amused to realize that my research skills are totally rusty. I have gotten so good at dumbing down my inner research geek to help students (sure, that’s the internet button, just click on it and away we go!) that I actually stared at Library Lit & Inf Science in consternation a few minutes ago, trying to sort out how to begin finding articles that speak to any sort of research interest whatsoever.

I vaguely remember going through a similar phase after the completion of my BA. I just forgot how to develop my own research topics and go after them. I recall soliciting essay topics on LJ just to have something to write.

Needless to say I don’t have anything resembling the time to write let alone to do research most of the time so this is an exercise in futility… or at least in collecting PDF versions of articles that I will likely never find a chance to read.

Absent in this list, quite notably from my perspective, is any discussion of the future job scenario. Like I have said before, I just don’t have the time to worry about a future job–I have too much to do with the job I have right now. That said, I still worry, a lot…