I'll think of an awesome title for this someday.

A little something I just composed.  I'll probably kick myself later for posting it because I like to tinker with things for a long time and I'm sure I'll decide later that it looks better another way, maybe add a verse or two, and I'll definitely think of a way better title (currently I have none), but screw it, here it goes:

What can you do when

An economy collapses?

You send out your resume

But you won’t get any chances

You did well in school,

Hoped you’d be a success.

But soon you’ll be forced to

Eat your MLIS

The years still go by

And you’ve had no luck yet.

Your life has been ruined from

Your massive student debt

You flip burgers for nothing

But yet you’re still trying.

You’ve lost all your hope,

But you keep on applying

Maybe someday when

You’re a septuagenarian

You’ll be able to say that:

“I am a librarian.”

The ice is getting thinner

Please bear with me.  As I mentioned not long ago, I recently lost all of the posts I'd written out prior to starting the blog.  This style of typing up a post as I think of it instead of "perfecting" it weeks or months in advance is a little alien to me.  Hopefully this won't hurt the quality that I'm pretending my posts used to have.

I have just entered the new semester, and I hope to God it is my last.  Obviously I've always been hopeful of that just because I was hoping I'd get a full time job in the field.  By now I've given up on that hope and I'm looking for literally anything else so that I'll never have to teach at this place again.  If I can find a job flipping burgers at Wal-Mart I will take it and never look back.

I mentioned before the behavior issues the students have, especially in this post:

http://failedlibrarian.blogspot.com/2012/12/paying-dues-when-doing-doesnt-pay.html

(skip down to "the workplace environment...")

I would love to go into more specific details, but quite frankly I'd be giving away too much if I did.  In the off chance anyone who knows the school were to read this, they'd know which school I'm talking about, because this kind of crap couldn't possibly happen at any other college.

Next semester will be Spring semester, and I have never had a good experience in Spring.  I don't know what it is, maybe it's the heat, but for some reason Spring brings out the most antagonistic, combative, and hostile students, and every single one of them ends up in my classroom.  I can't face that again, I just can't.  I can't, I can't, I can't.

Unfortunately I'm still wrestling with one not-so-minor problem.  Being a librarian is all I know how to do.  I don't have extensive experience in anything else.  If anything, I'm pretty sure that having a Master's degree hurts my chances of getting a job at a gas station or something.  And much to my detriment, I'm one of the apparently few people who isn't smart enough to hide that kind of thing.  It would just mean too many white lies during the interview.  Maybe not all white.  Maybe a few greenish ones, or even a crimson one.  I'm just not very comfortable with lying.

This is all I know how to do, and all I've ever done for any serious length of time.  I'm a librarian, I'm not qualified to flip burgers.  Where can I go?  The clock to Spring has begun...

What's so happy about it?

As of a little over a week ago, it is now finally official.  I am the quintessential go-to example of a loser stereotype.  I am a 30 year old living in my parents' basement.

I explained the whole parents' basement thing in this old post:

http://failedlibrarian.blogspot.com/2012/10/subterranean-homelife-blues.html

And now I've finally hit the "big" 30.  I don't see what's so big about it, though.  The only difference seems to be lower car insurance rates, and the sudden inability to eat pizza before bed from now on.

But that's neither here nor there.  The point is that I am 30, have had my MLIS for almost 5 years, and have yet to find any employment in my field that even qualifies as half-time.  Anyone surprised?  Show of hands?


.

.

.

  


Yep, that's what I thought.

FML

So, my hard disk died.  I had almost nothing backed up.  The disk is so thoroughly fucked that it would cost 1200-1500 to even attempt to repair it.

What does that have to do with this blog?  Well, aside from having had several blog posts written out in a word doc in advance, I also had my cover letter templates on that disk.  Yet another beautiful setback in my job hunting, like I needed one.

I also lost some statistics I was keeping, such as a list of every job I applied to.

This is all really the least of what I lost, but it's the only part relevant to my blog, so I'll leave it at that.