Story of my life
Two weeks from yesterday is my one-year anniversary at work. Which means, of course, that I'm starting to get restless. Not that I'm planning to go anywhere soon--at the very least, this job is supposed to be the "two years of professional experience" listed in the requirements section of most of the job ads I've encountered. But let's face it: "longevity" is not the word that springs to mind when you look at my resume. I've had six jobs in the eight years since graduation (although two of those were at the same time); my longest tenure anywhere was the two and a half years I spent in St. Louis. So for me, a year seems like both a milestone and an eternity.
But this anniversary isn't the only reason I've been thinking about my convoluted career path. At the college where I work, with its rigid schedule and campus-wide lunch period, some of the most anticipated and best attended events are the "faculty lunch talks." At our school, as I think it is with most art schools, the majority of the faculty teach to pay the bills; their real work is outside of class, in their studios or design firms or art galleries. So every few weeks one of them will give a talk about some aspect of their life outside of school.
They must be running out of faculty members.
Earlier this week the student activities coordinator, an instructor on the academic side who also has an affinity for books and European travel, stopped by the library to ask if he could schedule me for one of the fall slots. I must have let slip my checkered past, because he said he thinks it'd be interesting for the students to hear how I got where I am today; in effect, that it's good for them to find out that people don't always end up where they intended to. I guess you could say I'm living proof of that.
I told him I'd do it, although I'm not sure how many students will turn out to hear about how I became the school librarian. Especially the ones who have had me in class and had to endure my monotone. Now I just have to figure out what to say. I may be a cautionary tale about the importance of academic advising, avoiding procrastination, and not marrying the first person you meet in college, but it's not like I started out a phys. ed. major and became a physicist. None of my hats--aspiring writer, editor, librarian--have been all that different.
So I guess this will be my summer project--how to spin the short attention span that is the hallmark of my professional life into a story about serendipity and being open to life's possibilities. Good thing I've been wanting to get back into creative writing.
But this anniversary isn't the only reason I've been thinking about my convoluted career path. At the college where I work, with its rigid schedule and campus-wide lunch period, some of the most anticipated and best attended events are the "faculty lunch talks." At our school, as I think it is with most art schools, the majority of the faculty teach to pay the bills; their real work is outside of class, in their studios or design firms or art galleries. So every few weeks one of them will give a talk about some aspect of their life outside of school.
They must be running out of faculty members.
Earlier this week the student activities coordinator, an instructor on the academic side who also has an affinity for books and European travel, stopped by the library to ask if he could schedule me for one of the fall slots. I must have let slip my checkered past, because he said he thinks it'd be interesting for the students to hear how I got where I am today; in effect, that it's good for them to find out that people don't always end up where they intended to. I guess you could say I'm living proof of that.
I told him I'd do it, although I'm not sure how many students will turn out to hear about how I became the school librarian. Especially the ones who have had me in class and had to endure my monotone. Now I just have to figure out what to say. I may be a cautionary tale about the importance of academic advising, avoiding procrastination, and not marrying the first person you meet in college, but it's not like I started out a phys. ed. major and became a physicist. None of my hats--aspiring writer, editor, librarian--have been all that different.
So I guess this will be my summer project--how to spin the short attention span that is the hallmark of my professional life into a story about serendipity and being open to life's possibilities. Good thing I've been wanting to get back into creative writing.
posted by Madame Defarge at 4:01 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home