Well, I should have taken better notes. I always tell myself that I will remember what happens in class, but that is rarely the case. Unfortunately, I'll have to make do this time with faulty memory.
Something that struck me was how similar and how different all of our experiences with education turned out to be. Hippie schools, public schools, the right or wrong way to do research - it's astounding that we have all arrived at this course with such different perspectives. I'll just say it: I still don't know if I do research (or what passes for it in English Literature) the correct way. I never learned how. To this day, I do what I think the professor wants, turn it in, and cross my fingers. I've never been corrected, so I guess I've got the hang of it? I should probably figure this out if I'm going to be a librarian when I grow up.
The other thing that I have managed to remember was the brief discussion of what it means to be in a service profession. I have done service work my whole life, from a string of awful retail jobs to a short stint in food service (I wanted to be a chef at one point) to my current job in library circulation. It's all service, but libraries feel different. As a worker, I feel that I retain more of my dignity as a person when I work in a library as opposed to a department store. As a student of the profession, it is apparent that the reason for that is that in retail, the worker really serves the company. She serves money, and every interaction with a customer is reflective of that fact. In a library setting, the worker (whether a librarian, paraprofessional, or student employee) serves the best interest of the patron and of the community. That difference is why, though I would never consider a life-long career in retail, I am spending a lot of money and two years of my time on learning to be a good librarian.
Hopefully I still feel that way in three years when I'm a part-time librarian with enormous monthly loan payments to make.
- K
I like your point about serving the community rather than the company, Kristina. I too have a service background- patient services representative (ahem, secretary) in a medical office for all the summers of college, a year in the middle of college, and six months after college and I was good at it, but I hated it. It's funny, because you'd think that in a medical office you would get to serve people, but a lot of times I was just the barrier between an unhappy patient and the doctor. In the library, by contrast, I feel like I'm the gateway, rather than the gatekeeper. Even when I have to tell people the rules of the library (and I spend a lot of time asking people not to eat in the library), I still have the sense that I can actually assist people that need or want assistance.
ReplyDeleteI also like your point about research- I was lucky that I did have some college professors who stressed the need to do research and provided tools to learn how to do so, but I still managed to get through an awful lot of education without training in what is a pretty basic (i.e. everyone needs it, not that it's simple) skill. I have to wonder if lack of research skills points to the larger issue of teaching vs. learning. If students are seen as empty vessels waiting to be filled up by a teacher, why teach them to learn on their own?
"To this day, I do what I think the professor wants, turn it in, and cross my fingers." This is so key -- the idea that so many of us are satisficing when it comes to research -- doing the best we can in the time we have with the skills we have. It's important to keep in mind when we work with real-world patrons: they're just like us. :)
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