Join me on a look back at my decision to return to school at 31 to get a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science at Wayne State University. I’ll also share a subsequent tale of high adventure: I survived a hurricane at Disney Springs.
I’ll talk about the most important lessons I learned in my management course, finding community in reference, discovering a professional passion in the polar bear book, why I still thank the department 15 years later for making me practice public speaking, the hilarity and delight I took in cataloging (and how it’s providing me with nursing home insurance), a last-semester cross-country road trip in three vegan vignettes, and the all-hands-on-deck graduation party that we brought right to my grandma in her nursing home complete with three cakes transported from Lake Erie.
I love my profession, and I love my job. The three years in a Master’s degree program made it possible.
My mother worked in academic libraries her entire adult life. During my childhood, I would walk to campus on hot summer days and spend hours in the air conditioning and big, comfy, purple chairs at the James Madison University library. They had a small children’s collection for the use of their elementary education students, but that’s not where my interests lay. Our parents let us pursue our curiosities and I would spend my time reading about Patty Hearst, or life in pre-Vatican II British convents, or the four daughters of last Russian royal family. Anything my heart desired. My mother showed me how to fill out interlibrary loan slips when JMU’s collection failed to live up to my expectations. It was marvelous.
Of course, academic librarianship is not always glamorous. My mother had night supervisory duties at the U of M grad library in the 60s. She tells stories of in-for-the-night students bringing hot plates to cook pork chops in carrels (yup, that’s against those stodgy library rules).
She tells stories of receiving so many bomb threats that even after the U of M ROTC explosion, they didn’t bother to inform the police unless the caller would say
EXACTLY WHERE THE BOMB WAS.
My love of libraries was handed down to me from my mother. She turned me loose to explore the world from the safety and security of a card catalog.
Going back to school when you’re settled into adult life and working a full time job is a serious undertaking for anyone. At that point I’d been working in the Braille and Talking Book Library (BTBL) for about four years and I had both job security and great benefits. But my pay as a library tech was low, and there was no way to move into a professional position without a Master’s degree.
The Library of Michigan, our parent agency at the time, had decided to use federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) dollars to assist employees with library school tuition. How can you turn down a nearly-free degree?
Hubby was very supportive. We went from home cooking to convenience foods and he never complained once (OK, one time he said that he’d appreciate it if we didn’t have hot dogs again for a while).
But as someone who had recently completed the same program himself, he was in a great position to recommend courses and professors, and even how to approach my thesis class.
A friend of mine summed it up nicely as I was deciding whether to dive in. “What will you have in three years if you don’t go to school other than some free time you can look back on?” Now, I have a career I love and that I’m proud to call my own.
Plum Librarian LLC 