Greetings from the land of Unemployment or How Not to Have a Quarterlife Crisis
I should have known something was up when my work as a medical records clerk during my uni studies was infinitesimally more interesting than the ‘career’ I studied for.
Ever since I was 11 I wanted to be a software engineer. Because that was the job title in the credits of Commander Keen and dammit, I want to be involved in the computer games industry.
Life took a different turn as my parents told me to ‘be practical’ and to ‘get the degree now for money and the other one for love’ (which doesn’t happen, because why would you want to do that degree when you already have a ‘practical career’ going on?). Mark it down to advice #1 that you can freely ignore from your parents (Go ahead and do art classes! My only caveat is that with the creative industries, make sure you get some small business and marketing classes in there too).
Five years is a long time to slog through 2 degrees that you are not quite interested in, but feel ‘obligated’ to do. On honest days you tell people you are doing it purely for the money. You feel resentful when the friends you made at the start of this degree change degrees to what they are truly interested in and then have the audacity to tell you to ‘stick it out.’
A few years later, after yet another day of quietly dying in my ‘career,’ I stumbled miserably into dymocks and headed off into that section that looks a bit like rainbows and smells like nag champa. The holy grail of those that are blue: the self-help book section.
I wish I could say that I instantly had the tools to realise that being a librarian and information worker was a grand thing that intersected my interests and my skills at this point of time in my life and that I planned everything out very carefully, but that is not the case. It was a hard 2 years of whiny generation-y existential crisis facebook statuses (apologies to my friends and family).
So, hi! I’m Erin, currently residing in Sydney. In late July/early August I will be starting my graduate diploma in Libraries and Information Management.
I am in need of employment and although I am cute and adorable, my boyfriend tells me people don’t hire others on these attributes alone (well maybe, but he doesn’t want me involved in those industries), so I will say that I have experience in records, administration, database development and management and using weird SQL queries to find data and make new tables of data and Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is one of my favorite characters. I will happily be your maintainer of records and/or dedicated shelver-slave. Oh yes- I am also shameless. Pleasure to meet you!
I also went through an existential crisis before deciding to become a librarian. I didn’t go about it in the most sensible way – I resigned from my job/career, and *then* tried to figure out what to do! I found librarianship through a combination of self-help books, skills tests and serendipity. I started at the bottom of the ladder and, after 6 months of shelving and processing books, my new knowledge of libraries from the inside gave me the confirmation I needed to go ahead and enrol in the Grad Dip. And it was *so* worth it! I’ve now been working in libraries for 5 years (3 since getting my quals), and for the first time I feel like I fit my profession.
I hope that you also find the struggles along the way to librarianship to be worthwhile