This year is zooming past. Friday I leave for Spring Break. I’ll return to basically half a semester more of being a freshman. This year has gone by so quickly, especially in comparison to my turtle-slow senior year. Turtle in molasses, with a dumbbell on its back, slow.
As a worrier who often looks to the future, this has me thinking along these lines: Freshman year is almost over and then I’ll be a sophomore and then I’ll be gone for a semester in Europe and then I’ll have one semester at SU as a junior and then it’ll be my final year and I’ll be a senior and then I’ll be in the real world and college will be over! (Yes, that sentence was intentionally crazy).
It shouldn’t be surprising that I’ve been thinking about careers lately, even if I have time to spare.
I came into college very decided on my major and somewhat decided on my career path. I want to be a novelist, particularly a YA novelist, and I don’t foresee that changing, but I need another career to rely on for a living, unless I am blessed with exactly the right set of circumstances. Upon entering college I thought I knew what I wanted that career to be—an editor, maybe in children’s publishing. I was pretty much set on getting an Editing & Publishing minor. Progressively, the minor and career path thrill me less and less. I am far from ruling out publishing and might pursue an internship in that field down the line, but lately I’ve been considering becoming a librarian.
I volunteered in a library all throughout high school, and I loved it, but for some reason, I never thought about it as a career all too seriously. I didn’t think I was communicative or outgoing enough for the position, though I think college has given me more faith in myself in those regards.
The more I contemplate, the more I love libraries as institutions and the more I believe that they have the power to effect change. In Applied Biblical Ethics, at an InterVarsity conference I attended, and other aspects of my religious life on campus, my attention keeps being brought back to poverty. In Biblical Ethics, especially, we’ve discussed how poverty, usually on the global scale, cannot just be addressed by charity, but by larger social institutions and structures—by the way in which our world works. Improving literacy, whether globally or in the U.S., is key to educational success, and opening up doors to education for someone is key to helping them exit that cycle of poverty.
I think libraries can be so influential if they assist in instilling a love of reading or in giving someone the means to nurture that love, especially someone who would otherwise not be able to do so. I could often make purchases at a bookstore when I was younger. This is not the case for so many. Libraries provide other great resources of well. Even in my middle class suburban area, I know a lot of patrons where I volunteered relied on the library for internet and computer access, greatly important for job searches.
Particularly, I am thinking about being a children’s and young adult librarian because I love those books and would love to help that age group. However, I don’t think I’d like to be a school librarian but would prefer a public library setting.
Being a librarian would eventually mean going to grad school to get a MLS, Master’s in Library Science. This definitely freaks me out. In the beginning of the year, I told people that I would not go to grad school. 4 years was enough for me, thank you very much. And how would I afford it? But I am, I’ll admit, opening up to the idea, especially of working for a few years and then going for it online.
Maybe by my senior year, these four years will have seemed slow (though I doubt it), and maybe I will have a completely different life plan worked out (more likely), but I’m glad I have a place to record these thoughts, so I can see how I opened myself to new possibilities and how that has allowed me to evolve.
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