Epilogue

"God makes hungry.  The devil thirsty. [...] Well, folks, I guess many in this fine hall are as hungry and thirsty as me, and I'd better stop, folks, right here.  Yes, better stop.  My notes and my self are petering out.  Gentlemen, I have suffered very much, and more than any of you can imagine."
-From Pale Fire

Fitting for me to wrap things up with a quote from my favorite author, the one whose writing inspired a love for the printed word so deep that I became a librarian, and this blog was born.

I now consider this blog to be a finished product.  There won't be any more posts.  It was about the struggles of trying to become a librarian, and it lasted far longer than I thought or hoped it would.  But that part of my life is behind me now.  That is, unless I get laid off in a few months and need to begin my search anew, but we'll just imagine it's not likely.  I feel that this is a good way to bookend the blog; my second and penultimate posts are titled "Give Up" and "I gave up," respectively.

Now I suppose to sum up.  I finally made it, I'm a librarian.  It happened just 3 months shy of my decade anniversary of receiving my MLIS.

To review, what was the cost of this MLIS?

--10s of thousands of dollars of debt, between undergrad and grad school.  I think it began in the low 40,000s, and is currently at 11,500.

--Losing out on a decade of my life.  A decade I was unable to live independently, meaning a decade I was unable to do various things in my personal life that were important.  Things that I have a greatly diminished ability to do now that I'm 35, as those activities were much more suited for people in their 20s.

--Had to move to literally the other side of the country, nearly 1,000 miles away from everyone I know, to a state where like-minded people are harder to come by.

--Earning a salary that's a bit on the entry-level side.  My dad made significantly more just being a mailman.

I don't mean to sound unhappy, so I'll also list the positives:

--I like every single person I work with.

--I'm doing a job that feels meaningful.  I get to do something that makes a positive difference in the world, rather than toil away just to make a rich asshole richer.

Those two things matter, and they matter a lot.  I'm not at all unhappy in life right now.  But you can find those things in jobs other than librarian.

In the end was it worth it?  Absolutely not.  I fucked up my life for library science.  I lost the best years of my life waiting for something to come together for me.

Would I recommend an MLIS to anyone?  Absolutely not.

Would I, in fact, actively discourage people from pursuing an MLIS?  A little.  I recognize that no one can predict the future.  When I was in grad school they were predicting a huge boom for library jobs soon after I was scheduled to get my degree, and look how that worked out.  But still, I think a huge fall is much more likely in this field than a huge boom, and I would likely at the very least give the same advice I would have close to the start of this blog.  You had better be passionate enough that you're willing to make sacrifices and spend a good long time living the starving artist life.  If you're not, I highly recommend fucking right off, for your own sake.

Would I do things over differently if I had the chance to turn back time?  Yes, I would.  I would absolutely choose a different career.

But am I happy now?  Yeah.  I mean, I guess ask me again when I'm 50 and still never got what I really wanted out of life because I started too late, but right now I'm happy.  I've made a life for myself, albeit very late, and I'm doing something worthwhile with good people.

For posterity, here is the map I had been working on of my application attempts in its final version.  I failed to achieve my goal of being rejected by every state in the union, but I came very close.  Maybe someday...

On a final note, I posted on a librarian forum about me getting the job after nearly a decade.  I was shocked to see people telling me that yeah, that sounds about right.  I know the field is in poor shape, but I thought my case was exceptionally bad.  Sadly, I was wrong.  A few people told me that it's exactly normal, and absolutely no one tried to tell me I was just especially unlucky, and most people fare better.  Not one.  I submit that, while it's obviously possible to do better, it's also not incredibly unusual for things to go just about this badly.

On another final note:  I reread over my old posts.  There are some very, very dark turns in here.  I was depressed through some of this, and when I was, it showed.  I can't even remember what it feels like to be so miserable, and thankfully I haven't felt that way in some time.  When I look back on it, it's actually scary to see it.  It's a great relief to know I made it through all of that.

Happy trails to all, thanks everyone who read.  Most people finish novels faster than I finished this blog, but at least it finally happened.  Goodbye and good night.

I gave up

So, last year I was weighing some pretty heavy decisions about giving up.  Granted, I've been aware of that looming decision  ever since I began this blog-- my second ever post was titled: "Give Up."  But the end of 2017 is when it really reached the point where the ship had taken on so much water that it was now becoming urgent for me to get into a life raft, or fully embrace sinking to the bottom of the ocean.  As I weighed my options, I saw one last chance of rescue; a passing ship that just might be close enough to see my flare.

I realize I'm getting lost in metaphor as I tend to do, so to clarify: in late December, after having decided to throw in the towel, I got an email from a place on the other side of the country that wanted to interview me for a position.  So I decided, that's it.  This is my last chance.  Either I'm going to get this job, or I'm going to give up for good.  I'd get a minimum wage job working 40 hours a week while also teaching at night for another 9-16.  I'd live the kind of life I specifically never wanted: long hours, my life taken up by nothing but work, all just so I can scrape by.  I was going to be miserable, but I was out of options.  So everything is riding now on this one last chance.

Well... it started out well.  I had a phone interview in January.  It was actually quite promising.  They were impressed with my experience-- they even noted that it's unusual to get applicants with so much experience since it's an entry level job.  Oh, did I mention that?  It's an entry level job nearly 1000 miles away from me, in a part of the country where there are very few like-minded people, for a low (but at least livable) wage.  Yeah, in this "all or nothing" scenario, this is what I was considering the "all" to be.

Anyway, the phone interview was good and they invited me to their state-- again, almost 1,000 miles away-- for an in person interview.  This is where things went off the cliff.

I had to fly there.  I'd never flown.  This is the dead of Winter and I got a ride to the airport from my dad.  I guess it could have been worse.  I could have gotten onto the plane and it could have crashed.  As it turned out though, well, I've still never flown.

The flight got delayed.  Then it got delayed again.  And again.  And again.  I think I sat there for about 7 hours before it finally got cancelled.  So, the plane never took off.  They weren't able to get me onto another one that would have made it to the airport where my transferring flight was in time.  Oh, and did I mention that the place interviewing me was on a very tight schedule?    They probably wouldn't be able to reschedule.

I called the person who interviewed me.  The first words she says: "oh no, and you had such good references too."

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.  That was not a good thing to hear.  I suggested possibly a skype interview.  She couldn't make any promises, but said she'd call me early in the morning.

I got a ride back home from my dad.  It was dark, the road conditions were terrible, and he even got lost for a bit.  That ride home, after sitting at the airport all day waiting for a plane that never took off, was just such a fitting end to my hopes of getting into this career.

I woke up very early in the morning after very little sleep in anticipation of that phone call.  The bad news was that, indeed, there would be no rescheduling of the flight.  The good news was that at least they could give me the skype interview.

Great.  I mean... I guess they tried.  It was something.  But crap, we know that the main point of an interview is getting to know the person a bit so you can decide if they'll fit in with your culture.  And when everyone else got to meet them in person and I just get a skype interview, suddenly my odds have gone from promising to dismal.  Can you imagine living the rest of your life in a completely miserable existence, all the while knowing that things could have been completely different if one tiny thing-- like a plane taking off-- had gone differently?

I did the best I could with what I had.  There was a presentation involved, and I had to do it over skype, but I made it work.  She sounded very impressed; when it was over she said: "you actually pulled it off!"  Great, that's a point for me.  Adaptability-- I demonstrated the hell out of adaptability.  But that was worth 1 point, and developing a rapport is worth 50, so I wasn't surprised when I heard the words: "We're interviewing other people."  After just a few months shy of 10 years of trying to break into the field, with those words I heard the last nail being pounded into the coffin.

They told me I'd hear back within a week, and there was nothing more to say at that point.  My last grasp for a life that wouldn't be completely miserable had just played out, and it was a huge disaster.

So anyway, they called me the next morning and I got the job.

Yeah... you read that right.  Don't believe it?  Well, neither do I.  Because it only happens that way in the movies.  I give up, and literally my last chance, that's when it falls into place?  That could almost only be fiction.  That's the climax of a Shakespearean play-- the hero (sure, I'm a hero >.>) is either at his lowest point and suffers a huge reversal of fortune, or vice versa.  Or a movie-- the hero is on his knees, about to be dealt the death blow by his foe, when he turns it all around and throws the dastardly villain off the cliff.  But these things don't happen in real life.

Part of me still has to wonder if maybe I got in the airplane and crashed and died, and now my mind is in some kind of fugue state, extrapolating what my life might have been from my arrival to the airport on.

This is getting to be a long post, so expect an epilogue to follow.  I don't know when, but hopefully before too long.

Specificity

As us MLIS holders keep banging on the doors that the full time jobs are locked behind, I can't help be amazed and some of the job posts I see, and can't help but wonder how on earth they could ever be filled.  What kinds of jobs do I see when looking over library job sites?  Here are some fun examples:


Due Diligence Analyst (IL). 

I read the job description for this position and I still have no idea what they do.  But putting that aside, I'd love to know how many people went to library school in hopes of one day working as a Due Diligence Analyst.  If you're one of them, please tell me what you do in much simpler terms than I saw.


Product Coordinator- Reading Glasses (RI)

OK, I'm going to assume that this just made it onto a library job site completely by mistake, I don't think it's even supposed to be related in any way.


Bilingual Vietnamese Access Services Assistant (OR)

Seriously, who gets this job?  "Do you have an MLIS?  Do you have experience in access services?  Do you live in OR, or are willing to move there?  Do you also speak fluent Vietnamese?  Well then, it's your lucky fucking day.  Because if you have the qualifications to apply for this job, you're the only one!  Just show up to an interview, pants optional, and the job is yours!"  I would love to meet the person who got made fun of all through school because they studied for an MLIS and learned Vietnamese in the hopes of finding this exact job someday, and then it actually ended up paying off.  I would laugh and laugh and laugh.


These are of course oddball examples, but it's actually extremely common to see jobs that want you to have a second Master's degree, often in the hard sciences.  Yeah, I have a Master's in engineering, but now I'm going to spend the time and money on another Master's so I can go from being an engineer to being a librarian, because... I don't deserve to be happy.

These are the jobs I see when looking for employment.  Jobs I don't see: "Reference," without a bunch of stuff like "programming" and "children's lit" tacked onto it.  I'm pretty sure that used to be a thing, back before my ill fated graduation year of 2008.  I don't think they'll ever exist again.