ex libris, et cetera

Perhaps it’s ironic that right after I post about a completed school assignment, I have a “GUYS, I CAN’T DO THIS” post, but so it goes. I have never been less sure of pursuing my MLS as I have been in the past few months. My insecurity stems from a lot of this—at 23 years old, enrolling in graduate school was basically the first adult decision that I had made. No one was telling me “oh God, you’ll never get a job with just a B.A.” (even though that is now more true than not). No one said anything unless I asked for their opinion. As a result, the weight of this decision is something I think about almost everyday. Or at least when I see my Google Reader crammed with fashion feeds with only a few librarian feeds in the mix.

I freak out far more over reading about modernity and fashion than I do about RDA. I can’t get through The Atlas of New Librarianship because I’ve got 100 Dresses on my coffee table. Even as I link to Amazon, I get a nervous twinge of “is that what a librarian would do? I’m most certainly behind on the politics of book selling…” I feel like a fraud amongst so many intelligent, verbose individuals that carve out their own little slice of the interwebs with insightful remarks about the state of open access publications and the issues that e-books present. And yet, I don’t feel like a fraud when someone brings up Dior’s New Look or the morbid legacy of Alexander McQueen. I feel like I am home. But rather than get an MA in Fashion Studies, I went for the MLS. I had reasons, yes?

I find comfort in library professionals who express that getting through their coursework was the worst part of being a librarian. But that comfort is slowly fading as I see people get more and more excited about things that I cannot always muster much enthusiasm for. I hope I’m painting these “library stars” too one-dimensionally. I hope that they’ve felt these same doubts and insecurities. Even then, though, how do I separate the natural doubting process from the process of “um, this is not right for you. Bye now!”

Maybe I’m missing something. Given that I haven’t see the entire Star Wars trilogy and just saw The Goonies last year, that’s very possible.