Am I where I should be professionally?
Steven Bell is a fellow librarian whom I’ve never met but whose voice is strong, reasoned, and influential for me. I think he wrote his best blog post to date when he discussed how he has gotten to his current position in the library world, and points out the hills and valleys that we all must go through to be where we want to be.
Steven and I apparently share a few things in our histories, more than just our first name. One of those things is that both of us went straight to library school after completing our undergrad programs. By now I feel over the hill, but like Steven, I was only 23 when I started my first job as a serials cataloger at The University of Chicago. It was my first professional job but also my first full time job, ever. Looking back, I was incredibly young and naive. I wonder how my colleagues there put up with me. Fortunately some of them seemed to see something worth cultivating, otherwise I wouldn’t be where I am today. That first supervisor can be so critical, positive or negative, in the early days of a career. As I’ve noted many times before, I was really fortunate to have an excellent supervisor who pushed me to excel and made sure I had opportunities to do so.
I’ve been in this career for 16 years and at times I still wonder about the same thing: Am I where I should be professionally? If I had done this or that differently, would I be a director of some library somewhere by now? Do I even really want to be a senior administrator of a library any more? Many colleagues look at my varied career path and openly wonder about all of the changes and the variations in library settings I’ve been in. Even in this day and age of great mobility in terms of jobs (geographically and otherwise), it seems like most of my friends have stayed in the same library where they started, or at least have stayed in the same type of library (e.g. academic) throughout their career. I’ve jumped around quite a bit.
There have definitely been peaks with a lot of valleys mixed in. I still feel uncertain as to whether I have done all I should have done, accomplished what I should have accomplished, thus far. I see other people my own age or younger who have advanced far more probably than I ever could hope for, in a shorter period of time. I worry that I have burned too many bridges, been too vocally critical, too willing to push for change or to seek out change, too lax in completing things I’ve promised to do.
However, one of the things that tends to come with advancement in age is perspective. Maybe I could have and should have done better in my career. No doubt about that. However, I am where I am and that’s fine for now. I have made a ton of mistakes and I have questioned — so many times — whether I really wanted to stay in the library profession at all. About four years ago I thought for sure that I would be able to pursue a PhD in LIS, a dream of mine for many years. Circumstances have changed and I doubt that will ever happen. I am more at peace with all of that now. I know I am lucky to have any kind of job at all. It may not be what I envisioned for myself years ago. But I am thankful for it.
As Steven mentions in his post, family can play a huge part in defining or shaping a career. The biggest change for me of course is that I have been blessed to become a family man. My wife and children take first place, always.
I particularly noted Steven’s mention of the exposure that blogs provide for librarians. I think this is quite true and that we need to step back once in a while and see how very different (and for the most part, better) our library world is now than, say, 10 or 15 years ago.
