ACRL was conveniently in Indy this year, just an hour-long drive from Bloomington. I was awarded a student scholarship, which covered the cost of registration and my hotel stay–thank you ACRL!

I met Chealsye, Hack Library School writer and awesome tweeter. I met Annie–the former Managing Editor of HLS who passed the torch to me! And I met Micah, founder of HLS. (I thought he would be burly and bearded due to an avatar I kept seeing of him! So when I met him I was like, quoi? Nope, not burly, not bearded. Still awesome.) In other Hack Library School news, I  had an important  meeting that changed the trajectory of a certain project. Sorry for the mystery, but the cat’s not out of the bag just yet so I can’t spill.

I met more folks I knew virtually and had met at other conferences–lots of happy meetings and reunions. I also met plenty of new people. I spotted library celebrities with my very own eyes. So.many.librarians.

I presented a poster with my former co-worker and friend Ted Polley (hire him!). There was considerable interest in our visualization of Wabash College’s library collection. We even had librarians follow up with us so they can try the workflow with their library’s ILS data! It was a great reception and I couldn’t have asked for more thoughtful questions and perspectives on our visualization. [Just a note: if you are reading this and would like to see the complete poster and workflow, just DM me on Twitter @notsosternlib and I can arrange for a way to share the file.]

I went to several meetups and social events. Librarians love to drink. Granted, I never found a hotel room booked by the conference organizers simply to store massive amounts of booze (this happened at WAAL – but that’s Wisconsin, so no surprise there). Instead, librarians just flocked to local bars.

Henry Rollins was the only keynote speaker I heard and he rocked it. I sat in the THIRD ROW so he was literally right in front of me. I think the ACRL organizers were trying to make the scholarship recipients feel like VIPs, because we were sitting in the reserved section with actual VIPs (for instance, the director of the IU Libraries was in the row behind me). Well, it worked. I felt like a VIP. I guess someday I’ll have to run an impressive library that will sponsor ACRL speakers and programs. I’m indebted since I saw Henry Rollins’ face up close and personal. Good tactic, ACRL; well played.

I helped with ACRL THATCamp. I ran in and out of sessions. It was Friday, so my mind was almost useless after a mere two days of conferencing. I saw the posters and tended to my emails (including some stress-inducing bombshells).

Overall, I had an ideal first experience with ACRL. It’s easy to imagine this being the conference I go back to every two years. The 2015 conference is in Portland, Oregon, and I will definitely be there. I plan to get involved with ACRL committees and sections within the coming years as well–as soon as I figure that mysterious process out.

Some photos:

These are my business cards. I had them made in January and I don’t think I ever shared them here on the blog.

I used VistaPrint. I carefully selected the font and the gray ink and the information I wanted to add. I remembered to switch “School of Library and Information Science” to “School of Informatics and Computing,” as will befit our official status as of July 1, 2013. I measured things and double checked the alignment because I am picky when it comes to design. Since this was before I had a professional headshot taken by the IU Libraries, I used a photo of myself from a few years ago.

I left some space on the right hand side to add washi tape. After seeing several washi tape business card tutorials on various crafting blogs, I had become fixated on the idea of adding washi tape to my own card. Perhaps you feel, as I do, that there’s a lot to love about washi tape.

I got the idea to put a picture on my card after the combination of a) The comments in Erin Dorney’s helpful post about business cards for library school students, and b) Coming home from conferences with stacks of cards and really having to wrack my brain to figure out who they were  – I ended up googling the names to remember their faces! So I decided to stick a black and white photo (classic, I thought) on my business card. While not a convention, it seemed like a good way to help people remember who I was.

So that’s the boring backstory of my business cards that you don’t really need to know. All you need to know is that I liked them and was excited to hand them out.

Can you guess what happens next? Probably. Two or three weeks ago–the halfway point of my conferencing month–I received an email from a mentor that shared the opinion that my business cards send the wrong message. Namely, that the washi tape implied that I might not take the profession seriously and that the picture could seem like vanity. Cute. Not professional.

Please know that I know that these are very valid opinions. It was very kind of her to bring this up to me because I can absolutely imagine some people judging me negatively based upon my business card. I had considered the factors she brought up when I created the cards–not so much the vanity part, which didn’t cross my mind, but certainly the thought that someone may see the pink and the polka dots and think I’m a kid. Or someone who values style over substance.

I still felt vaguely idiotic, though. Rebuked. Chastised. And ever since, I’ve been thinking about this idea of “professionalism.”

I had a fair amount of anxiety when I came to library school. It was the creeping, subtle kind. I felt weird writing on my blog, like I needed to write like a grown up, real, expert librarian–and I wasn’t any of those things. I thought I had to literally strip myself of personality and become neutral in every way because to me, serious equaled professional.

As I worked more and did more, I did a double-take. I thought back on that mindset, which is very easy to feel–you are new, naive, and want desperately to impress and to have something to add to this profession. Accept me! I’m not a kid, I’m an adult! I deserve to be here! All that jazz. I felt stifled and I realized that I needed to share my aesthetic and write and speak in my true voice, otherwise what’s the point? Kind of like this comic, which I warn you, is unprofessional (profanity alert!).

Anyway, I’ve come to believe that there is no one “professionalism.”

It comes down to personal preferences, opinions, even calculated risks. What one person considers fine another may consider unprofessional. You don’t need to go further than Hiring Librarians to see that. I understand why some people would choose not to have washi tape or an image on their business card. Better to be safe than sorry. I get that. The job market is tight. But I would rather be transparent from the get-go, and take ownership of myself. That’s fair to me and to my current and future employers.

These days, the librarians I meet have piercings, tattoos, dreadlocks and multicolored hair. I’ve seen mini business cards with crazy artwork and cards with technicolor cats. I’ve been inspired by places like ALA Think Tank, a fun, decidedly unstuffy group of librarians on Facebook, and Librarian Wardrobe, where having an interest in style isn’t shallow. Not to mention the digital media/humanist/alt ac world; they’re a hip bunch. I am sure someone out there thinks of these individuals/groups as unprofessional, but I’m a big fan. People who are open and expressive just seem happier–and make better colleagues, in my experience.

Final thoughts: anyone who judges my card harshly enough to preclude hiring me isn’t someone I would want to work with anyway. Not to be rude, I’m sure that person has their reasons, but for reals… if I can’t have a polka dot (or chevron, or striped, or floral) pattern on my pre-institutional business cards, I’ll pass! My CV speaks for itself.

When I was in Nashville this past weekend for LOEX, I went to a presentation given by my boss, mentor, and all-around amazing librarian Carrie Donovan and her colleague Jennifer Corbin of Tulane University. The presentation focused on how karaoke can inform your instructional practice. It was rad and participatory and quite the hoot.

The above slides, part of their presentation, refer to the tensions that exist on the journey to becoming our authentic selves.  (If/when the slides become public in any way I’ll link to them here.) Carrie and Jennifer discussed this (far more eloquently than I just put it) in the context of library instruction, but all I could think about was how it expresses the push-pull of choosing how to present oneself to the world. We are all different. The decision isn’t one-size-fits-all.

What are your thoughts on professionalism? How do you choose how to present yourself?

Wednesday, April 10

Early!  Drive to Indy with Chealsye, my ACRL roommate.

8:30-12:30  Increasing the Effectiveness of Your Scholarly Communication Program: Strategic Skills for Success (ICC, 103-104)

3:30-4:00  Meeting

4:00-5:45  Opening Keynote, Geoffrey Canada (JW, Grand Ballroom 1-6)

7:00-8:00  First-time Orientation/ACRL 101 (ICC, 104-106)

8:00-9:00  Battle Decks! Imagine, Improvise, Inflict: Get Inspired or Die Trying (ICC 109-110)

9:00-11:00  ACRL Think Tank Tweetup & Social (The Slippery Noodle)

Thursday, April 11

8:00-10:00  Scholarship Breakfast (Eiteljorg Museum)

[But if I didn't have the breakfast I would go to 8:00-9:00  Information Literacy and Scholarly Communication: Mutually Exclusive or Naturally Symbiotic? (ICC, 104-106) ]

10:30-11:30  Game on! Creating Video Game Collections at Academic Libraries (ICC, 109-110)

1:00-2:00  Hacking the Learner Experience: Techniques and Strategies for Connecting with Your Instructional Ecosystem (ICC, Wabash 2-3)

2:00-3:00 Poster sessions. MY poster session! Come see it!

3:00-4:00 From the Periphery into the Mainstream: Library DIY Cultures and the Academy (JW, Grand Ballroom 9-10)

4:20-6:00  Keynote, Henry Rollins

7:00-8:00  Dinner with Colleagues  (Bru Burger Bar)

8:00-9:00  LibTechWomen Meetup (Scotty’s Brewhouse)

9:00-10:00  Libations. Librarians. Libertine. (Libertine Liquor Bar)

Friday, April 12

8:30-5:00  THATCamp ACRL – I’m helping out! Stop by and say hello!

5:30-7:00  IU SLIS Reception (JW Marriott Downtown, Monument Room)

7:00-9:00  HackLibSchool Meetup (The Ram Brewery)

I flew to Raleigh on Saturday the 16th, arriving at just after noon. I took a (very expensive) taxi to the (very fancy) Aloft hotel in Chapel Hill. Napped. Awoke around 3, refreshed. Went to the lobby of the hotel to wait for a taxi to go downtown. While I was hanging out, waiting, a guy at the bar said, “Hey!” and I went, “Oh dear” (in my mind). But then he said, “Are you here for the Digital Curation Symposium? I think you just followed me on Twitter.” Then I felt amused because I had done so at 6am in the airport waiting for my flight, totally randomly and totally without the knowledge that he was a symposium participant! We chatted and he invited me to a social gathering taking place that night at a wine bar in downtown Chapel Hill.

Soon enough my taxi arrived and I headed out to explore. Chapel Hill is a lovely college town (and boy do I love college towns). I wandered up and down Franklin Street. I got frozen yogurt and traipsed around the UNC campus with several near-drip experiences. They say UNC rivals the IU campus in terms of beauty. I would agree. I like to think of them as cousins, both appealing in their own way.

While I was waiting for the evening social, I ended up spending some of my time just sitting on benches on campus. The calm, a byproduct of UNC’s spring break, was awfully nice. When the time came I headed to the wine bar. I was the sole Master’s student in a sea of PhD students. I almost didn’t want to confess to my novice nature during introductions, but I did.

Everyone was really kind.  I realized while I was there that I had kind of assumed I’d be as lost and unable to connect as I felt at my first library conference, the WAAL conference–which was only two years ago. (Two! What? It seems like a decade ago at least. Two years ago I had never gotten paid to work in a library, had never spoken in public, I worked like 15 hours a week plus classes and felt busy. Times have changed.)

When Sunday came around, it was nice to have connections made already. The schedule for Curate Thyself was ambitious, with events occurring from 8:30-7: a mix of keynotes, panels, and mentoring sessions followed by a reception and graduate posters. (I was exempt from the poster, as I haven’t done original research.)

The day was basically comprised of tips for hacking your PhD program. Many of the lessons were applicable to Master’s students as well, and many many many resonated with my own experience. Here are some ideas, cobbled together from my notes, that I took away from the day (and apologies that I can’t attribute these to individual people–lots of folks were talking):

• Find support groups. Community is important.
• Understand that a PhD is an apprenticeship, and that a dissertation is NOT your life’s work.
• Be opportunistic. Be prepared to shift and change.
• Find a mentor who is active professionally who will take you to conferences and make connections.
• Go to every job talk. You want to be in a world where by the time you have to do it, you’ve been there 12 times. You know the questions; you know what works and what doesn’t work.
• Criticism makes you better, but it’s painful.
• Carve out a niche for yourself. Find something small but significant and do it well.
• Find a way to translate what you do for others.
• At conferences and other events, understand that you are part of a self-selecting group.
• Don’t feel like it’s wrong to go headhunting people at conferences.
• Your CV should always be public.
• Everyone carries the idea that they have some failing or flaw. Everyone.
• Set rules about time with your family.
• Choose who to disappoint–because you will disappoint someone.
• It’s about sustainability, with periods of intensity.
• To learn how to write grants, ask to read successful grants.
• Be ready to answer, “What else can you do?”
• Make collaborations explicit with contracts or other written agreements.
• Work toward mobility.

These next ideas are from Carolyn Hank of the UT iSchool:

• Get money.
• It’s personal–it’s all about you.
• Help yourself by asking for help from others.
• Ask yourself: How does something help (or hurt) your goals?
• Changing your location doesn’t change bad habits. You have to work toward being better.
• Write no’s on your calendar. Celebrate the no’s.

I just took it all in. Scribbled on my legal pad. I recognized myself right there in that room, in some people at least. They were driven. Tough. Loved what they did. Took it all on. I recognized my personality–but not the application of the hunger we all had. The refrain of the day was, Only do a PhD program if you love doing research.

And guess what?

I don’t love doing research. No surprise there, probably. I appreciate it. I want it to happen and I want all the smart people I shared that room with to do it. But I don’t want to, I just want to use it to make my library better.

I’m a doer. Not a researcher. My questions were about how the professors and PhD students work with practitioners and whether there are any practice-based data curation programs. I give myself away every time.

Monday’s Digital Curation Experts Meeting was quite different from Curate Thyself. Educators from the US, Canada, UK, and Scotland gathered to share what their institutions were doing in relation to data curation education. Some offered Master’s or post-Master’s certificates. Some offered classes. The PhD students were really just there to soak it in with the understanding that this was the mantle they would be taking on someday. I was a fly on the wall, again taking it all in.

I should note that I was the only person from IU that was present. Kind of concerning. Of course, not every program  can specialize in everything–but data preservation/curation/stewardship/whatever else you want to call it is huge. It encompasses so many areas. Students are going to be hurt by IU’s lack of curriculum in this area. I know I personally feel deprived, hence my flying halfway across the country for some info. It may seem harsh, but I was embarrassed that no one else was present from IU.

After the Experts Meeting, I escaped to Caribou and met my fellow HackLibSchool writer Julia. It was grand!

On Tuesday, my final day, I slept in a bit. Markus, a friend from previous conferences (DHSI, HathiTrust UnCamp), picked me up from Chapel Hill, which was very kind considering the cost of a taxi to Raleigh. First he showed me Hill Library. I kept hearing about how Hill just didn’t fit the needs of the campus, not enough room, too cramped, etc.–but I am sad to say that when I walked through, I thought, Ummmm, awkward, this is better than Wells Library in plenty of ways. More tech. Engagement with students seemed more…intentional. I guess that is just to say that while the space was not ideal, I thought they used it well.

Another fun fact: There were cows and sheep near Hill Library, part of some fair. NCSU is an agriculture and engineering school, after all. I felt like my Wisconsinite Norwegian farmer ancestors were all smiling down on me, saying, You can trust people at a place with farm animals! 

After Hill came the icing on the cake of my whole North Carolina trip: seeing Hunt Library. I’ve heard a lot about it. Between the information I’ve come across and the information I’ve sought out, I knew quite a bit. But seeing it? Unbelievable. Clearly, it was impossible to take a bad picture of the place.

After wandering around in Hunt (here’s how you should imagine me: wide-eyed, poking into their Game Lab and 3D printing room with my carry-on bag rolling behind me, probing the “Ask Us” people with questions about their roles and gushing when they said they were both tech and reference, giddy as a kid when they said they’d show me how the book bot worked) I met my friend Kate, a current NCSU Fellow who, amusingly enough, I met at the WAAL Conference I referenced earlier in this post. It was great to see a familiar face and it just goes to show that the library world is small–you never quite know whose path you’ll cross again in the future. We chatted about Hunt Library, the Fellows program, library school, and cats. And she dropped me off at the airport to boot! It was wonderful.

I flew back (Charlotte, then Indy) too late to catch the shuttle to Bloomington. Slept in the airport, feeling so satisfied by the delightful, exhausting trip. It was clarifying to be exposed to new, fresh places and ideas. I think I needed it.

But I do know what’s happening this week! It’s spring break. I’m working 30ish hours at Wells Library over the span of the week. The library closes at 5pm to my horror, since trying to be productive in my apartment is often pointless. It feels a bit like a tomb in Wells: totally somber, deserted, lifeless. The skies have been gray too. Happy spring break indeed!

On Saturday I’m flying to North Carolina. I keep forgetting about it, so maybe writing about it will help me remember. I’m headed to UNC-Chapel Hill for the Digital Curation Symposium. Technically, the symposium is supposed to be for PhD students doing digital curation research… but I emailed and asked if Master’s students interested in digital curation would be considered for the $800 stipend to attend, and what do you know? I was accepted, stipend and all. Needless to say I’m quite excited to go on my very first free trip. It’s a pseudo-vacation–not totally taxing since I’m not presenting, but not exactly relaxing since I still need to be intellectually engaged with all the people who are way more knowledgeable about digital curation. I already know my brain will hurt by the end.

I think attending will give me a better grasp on whether or not I am interested in a PhD program, which is something I never really considered until recently. I always thought of myself as a practitioner, not a theory person… but maybe I’ve miscategorized doctoral programs. I’m willing to give it a fair try.

I’ll be gone in NC from the 16th-19th. And the 19th is so close to April. And April is the MONTH OF CONFERENCES, aka the conglomerate of acronyms: ACRL-MAC-HASTAC-LOEX.

Yes, for a month straight I will have conferences (plus the LSB’s graduate recital–which is effectively his graduation since he’s not walking). I’ve adjusted my work schedule accordingly. I’m crossing my fingers that I don’t need to miss class. While the lovely, saving thought I always have when I apply for said conferences is that I have plenty of time to prepare for them well ahead of time… let’s get real. When does that happen? Things are moving along and my 2 panel presentations, 2 posters, and 1 interactive workshop will all be fine. They’ll get done, but they’re not done yet.

I know looking ahead to the conferences that energy management will be my main concern. For as many enjoyable things there are about conferences–new faces! food! knowledge transfer!–I am always flattened with exhaustion at even one conference. I’m an introvert. After every single presentation I’ve ever given I get a headache and the instantaneous urge to fall asleep. I need time to recharge, and I know I won’t always get that due to the nature of conferences. The point is to get to know people, learn new things, and see new sights. I will need to be a superhero this April. It’s worth it, though.

9:30-12:15: Information Architecture. We are working on a semester-long project to reimagine the information architecture for a particular website. I’ve chosen the labyrinthine Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Center website, which I used frequently throughout the library reorg process. Today we turned in our scope and strategy documents, which include things like functional specifications, personas, and a content audit (a painstaking process!).

12:30-5: Working for the Avalon Media System. We are inching closer to R1 but it isn’t here yet so I am mainly pulling together info needed for the release and adding additional blogs/websites where we can push content.

5:40-7: Meet with a fellow SLIS student to discuss her interest being an SAA-SC officer for the next school year, plus other SLIS strategizing. She buys my coffee and it’s the sweetest thing ever.

7-10: Grab a bagel and plant myself in the Information Commons. I work on my homework for Systems Analysis and Design, a class I find very valuable though the current assignment wears on me because, drumroll please, we have to create models. Shudder!

I am a list-maker. I make hastily scrawled, scrambled, meandering lists, I refine those into useful lists, and then I check off my tasks. Simple. I am very much a linear thinker with zero spatial analysis skills so all the bubbles, lines, arrows… I don’t get it. I look at the models in my textbooks and they look messy and bewildering to me, distracting enough to distort the actual content. I understand the value for some people, and I’m still open to the idea that a good model might be beneficial… but I’m not sold quite yet.

I hand draw the models for my homework assignment. I’m not exactly proud that I did not do some fancy thing in Gliffy or Creately; I would love to be able to say that I came up with something flawless and professional looking, but, eh, that’s not the case. Could I have? Yes. Would it have taken me way more time than it was worth? In my opinion, also yes.

The truth is that every day I have to reprioritize. I don’t think I can have it all and for my time at SLIS I have always been willing to let my schoolwork take the fall rather than let my jobs suffer. I made that decision a long time ago and it is the right one for me. I accept docked points. I accept an A- or B+. And you know what? My grades are fine. I just can’t commit an excess of time to homework that’s only maybe tangentially related to anything I might someday do; it doesn’t make the cut when I do a cost-benefit analysis. I see so many students obsessed with straight As, pouring so much time into homework, not working at all, and I can’t help but feel that they’re missing the point.

The situation: I am fraught with weird, gutting undercurrents of anxiety. And the first problem is that I hate to even admit it. Not because I’m full of pride–can you tell I’m an open book?–but because I don’t want to be told some variation of: “Well, that’s what you get when you take on too much,” or “You’re burned out,” etc. I think often that comes from a kind place and, admittedly, I don’t think I have stellar work-life balance right now. However, there is nothing I despise more than being tsk tsked because of my work schedule or responsibilities. I asked for it. I’m a typical ISTJ, put me to work and I will bulldoze through tasks. Scrutinize my workload and there’s little that could incense my further. I don’t work to be busy; I don’t work to complain. I work to earn options in my career. If I didn’t work to the extent I do I would be anxious too, just for different reasons. Really it just comes down to me being twentysomething, meandering and lost and broke, figuring out so many life things alongside the professional. It’s bound to get messy sometimes. So here goes.

1. Lately I’ve been petrified as being perceived as someone that’s trying too hard. It is painful to realize that the CV I have poured so much energy into is now something I feel trapped by. I keep thinking back on that girl in high school who was in the photo for every single club. Anime club, French club, Forensics… flipping through the yearbook, her face would be on each page. Has that become me? Does my superinvolvement read as obscene, too much?

I have done a lot in the past year and a half. I am terribly proud of the work I have put in–both the long-term planning and the daily grind–because it didn’t always come easy, but I stuck with it. And truly, I’ve been involved in so much because I’m still finding out where I fit. There’s a lot that comes with the word digital. The job postings that look most appealing to me are often the ones that are a random mixed bag of tasks and responsibilities. But seriously… trying to gain experience in digital libraries/archives/stewardship/ preservation/curation/humanities… there are SO many terms, SO many responsibilities, SO many expectations for being able to relate to all of it. (My expectations.)

Mostly I’ve been excited by this variety and the chance to become a digital generalist. Let’s face it, anything less and I’d probably be bored! But for some reason right now I just feel like what I’ve done, what I’m doing, makes me seem like an automaton and kind of, I don’t know, shallowly flashy? I always wanted employers to look at my CV and think, My, she has worked hard. She really wants this. But what if they look think I’m all over the place instead?

And on that note…

2. The foundation of my strong work ethic is that I am driven. Yes, motivated. I want a career in this field. Perhaps this is just my perspective, or colored by gender–but sometimes it feels inappropriate to be ambitious. Like I will be perceived as less of a wholesome, pure hearted, service-oriented librarian. Like it is more appropriate to coyly float up the ranks and just “find” myself successful. But that sort of accidental trajectory really doesn’t work for me. I value having control and choices–and I am happy to earn them.

When I was in high school I would sit in classes and just write in my journal. I really didn’t care that much. I got As and Bs with very little effort. I kept to myself.

When I was an undergraduate I decided to graduate in three years. It was doable. I would be an English major, Rhetoric and Composition focus because I just couldn’t do Lit. (I read voraciously but felt the life sucked out by all that fussy overanalysis. Theory, blech. I preferred technical writing in every instance.) I got As and Bs with very little effort. My BA was just something to get through, so I did.

Fast forward to now. I’ve been in graduate school for a year and a half and my experience has felt quite different. I am fully engaged in the work I do. I found the fire I was searching for. I care! I can apply my skills to a field I enjoy! I still get As and Bs with what I’d deem little effort. But! Life is infinitely more fulfilling. My ambition is a true measure of how much this profession matters to me.

And that leads me to…

3. Underscoring all of this is a story.

I work well when I have goals, so I set a goal for myself when I came to IU in the fall of 2011. I decided I would do everything possible to secure a particular position for myself after graduating. I’ve held onto thoughts about the position when I needed encouragement to stay an extra hour, two hours, on this project or that project. It has been at the back of my mind since I came to SLIS.

Recently I discovered that this position is going through the hiring process for the upcoming year. Although this has nothing to do with me or my chances (I apply this fall), I was struck with this deep, cold, toxic fear that despite my jobs and presentations and carefully cultivated digital project skill set, it will not be enough when I apply next year. I will be that girl who tried too hard. Or that girl who was too general, not specialized enough. Or that girl who just came close. Or that girl with a pretty CV who disappoints in person. Or… some variation on the aforementioned. Some quietly sinister failure.

These are my greatest fears. I fully realize that I if I don’t get the position, I will cry. I will mourn. But I’ll get over it and get a job, then another job, and so forth–and build a fulfilling career. Rationally, I get this–but I’m really hung up on it in this moment.

None of this is helped by a burgeoning cold, being chronically tired, about to hit the 5-year mark with a significant other as we stare blankly toward a hazy future. I’m adrift in more ways than one, but building a career is a solid something I’m used to hanging my hat on. A source of pride, accomplishment, and happiness. Lately, this area of my life has felt anything but comforting. It is disorienting.

I guess this post is mostly about having large dreams that make you feel vulnerable. And about how no matter what your resume/CV looks like, you’ll never feel totally secure. A little impostor syndrome thrown in for good measure. Soon, I’m hoping to move back into a place where these unfun thoughts aren’t dominant and I can just get back to work, unfettered.

7:39am – Catch the bus. I had tried to find my parka in my apartment before realizing, oh yeah–I left in in my car. Brilliant move, but it goes to show how unseriously I take Indiana winters.

8am – Work. Fridays are always quiet in the Digital Library Program. I like it; I get more done. Today’s work includes learning about Google Analytics for our new website (the documentation is extensive–I had no idea how much there was to know), communicating with individuals whom I’m working with on Avalon blog posts, and getting used to using HootSuite. Beyond the above tasks and the necessary housekeeping, I compile lists of relevant audio/video/film/media preservation organizations with an online presence. I also do a fair amount of planning for the late February Release 1 of Avalon, figuring out who we’ll need to contact, what sort of documentation to provide, whether the website will need any new elements added to it. It’s a lot of organization and project management today, all day.

I decide not to go to the afternoon CATAPULT text analysis tools meeting. It was a tough choice… but I needed to work. I was getting things done and didn’t want to give up the money. I have so many expenses for my spring conferences: MAC, ACRL, LOEX, HASTAC. I’m presenting at all of them. Luckily student registration is usually cheap, but transportation and other expenses add up. I am trying to pocket every penny in anticipation of the money pit that will be my April.

5pm – Done! I head to the information commons to deal with a few project followups–more Hack Library School and SAA-SC things mostly.

7pm – Leave the library and walk to Mother Bear’s, Bloomington pizza place famous for its delicious offerings and its mascot of a bear with cleavage. I’m ravenous and meeting my two dear friends.

8:30pm – I head home. I am so elated that I don’t have to wake up early tomorrow. I have a neat and tidy to-do list prepared so hopefully I can knock out the tasks productively and quickly–I want to go thrifting! You see, I have a whole collection of crewelwork that I want to find cheap frames for and arrange in a sort of floral granny homage on my living room wall. The LSB will tease me about it endlessly, which is fine–he knew exactly what he was in for when he opted to move in with me.

I do miss the days of thrifting, quilting, making stuff. I get the feeling that I’ll probably always be an achievement junkie, taking on a lot, but this semester (by design) is a little much. I just want to be compensated well and to end each day at the very latest at 6:30 and to keep most work (barring special projects) from my sacred weekends. None of that is true now, but it’s the driving force behind everything I do: buckling down now for freedom, flexibility, and options later.

8:19am – Catch the bus with the LSB yet again. I swear, this never happens.

8:30am – Time for a very short stay at Avalon. I pull together a blog post about our latest software demo and push it on social media channels. I also tweak the Twitter notification settings and explore using HootSuite to enable me to schedule tweets for times I’m not working for Avalon.

10am – Group meeting for my Systems Analysis and Design class. We meet in the deserted PhD lab, a cozy space tucked away from the rest of the SLIS lab by a partition. Our team decides on a weekly meeting time for the duration of the semester and that we’ll be collaborating through Box. We determine who we’ll be interviewing, the purpose of our questionnaire, chart out deadlines for our project.

11am – Meeting ends. I stay in the SLIS lab and write up our notes so that I can share them on Box. I’ll have a busy night so I want to get this out of the way.

11:30am – Work: the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center, technically part of SLIS though it seems like its own world. I’ve worked for CNS since my first week in Bloomington. I do a lot of miscellaneous stuff, basically whatever needs to be done, from compiling handouts to printing giant science maps on the plotters to editorial work. I have certainly learned a lot more about big data and visualizations through this job. My boss is amazing and flexible, so I always enjoy my Thursdays.

Today I work on usability testing for Katy’s upcoming MOOC and edit a section of the Sci2 documentation. I know that over the weekend I’ll need to work on a copyright compilation project I am managing for the next Atlas of Science;  I have a 9am meeting about it on Monday and I won’t be able to get to it this afternoon.

3pm – Discover during work that I didn’t get a conference scholarship I had hoped for. It’s not the end of the world, of course, but it’s always a bit deflating. I’m a firm believer that disappointment/rejection is a powerful, humbling thing that makes me a better professional… but still. I archive the email almost instantly. It saps my energy.

7pm – Done with CNS. I move across the hallway to the office of the faculty member I work for. She’s retiring in a few years, so we are shredding and recycling things left and right. It isn’t intellectually challenging, which is FINE by me–I have enough to think about as it is. It’s placid in the SLIS hallway at night, and I revel a bit in the rote work. The fact that this GAship (with tuition remission, my dream for so long) even fell into my lap in the first place amazes me. For all my gripes about SLIS making me take S401 and my godawful Reference class, I will always be grateful for the opportunities SLIS has afforded me. Don’t get me wrong: I stand by my opinion that SLIS should accept fewer students and take a more active role pushing students to work and become involved. That said, I have loved my time here. Loved it. Beautiful Bloomington. Fantastic program. Wonderful people (emphasis: seriously wonderful people). I found everything I ever wanted when I made the nail-biting choice to ditch Wisconsin for Indiana.

9pm -  Done for the day! Well, kind of. I’m off the clock but I need to finish my Midwestern Archives Conference column still. I’ve been coming back to it day after day and I keep comparing it unfavorably to the previous years’ columns on the same topic.

9:10pm – Head out to catch the bus and am shocked that outside is a freezing snowy place that actually resembles winter. I check my phone–it is apparently 10 degrees out. I’m not dressed the part; I’m in a peacoat without my earmuffs or even mittens. Everyone looks wretched but the brutal cold is somewhat refreshing… I can’t get used to Indiana weather. On Tuesday/tornado watch day, it was 66 degrees out when I came home, now this?

When the bus arrives there’s a mad dash to get on. A girl who deliberately avoids my eye actually stabs me aside with her spindly elbow. Selfish haste, quite ugly.

9:35pm – Home. Tired. This week has been rough. I shower, do the dishes, finish my Midwest Archives Conference column. Make tomorrow’s to-do list. Another long day: 8am-7pm, then meeting friends for dinner at 7:30.

I know I couldn’t maintain this type of schedule forever, the constant going, going, going. But for now, it’s okay. I asked for this and the last thing I’ll do is act like I’m some sort of victim. I am delighted to be immersed in a profession I enjoy–that’s just not something that everyone has. And anyway, it’s the mundane everyday work that builds a career. It doesn’t need to be glamorous.

7am – Wake up (reluctantly). Every day I leave the LSB still sleeping. Lucky boy.

7:39am – Catch the bus. I’m actually running on schedule, and equipped with coffee that I neither ran out of time to make nor forgot on the kitchen table.

8:05am – I arrive at the Kinsey Institute for Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, my only non-Wells Library job. Here, I spend my days in the Digitization Lab working on projects or giving trainings. My first task is to help digitize several articles by June Reinisch, former Director of the Kinsey. Sadly, her personal archives were mostly destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. While her research has mainly focused on prenatal factors impacting gender identity and expression, next week she is giving a talk about prenatal factors and their impact on the development of Autism. We race to get the information scanned and sent to her in New York.

10am – I begin work on the Harry Benjamin collection. Benjamin was a leading sexologist studying transsexualism during the mid- to late 20th century, and the Kinsey has an extensive array of his publications, personal papers, correspondence, and other miscellany (I obviously need to edit and reflect this on the Wikipedia page I just linked to so the Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology doesn’t get all the credit…). Anyhow, the Kinsey Institute Library and Archives has signed a contract with the Alexander Street Press, so Benjamin’s is one of the collections that we will be working to digitize over the coming months alongside the collections of Alfred Kinsey, John Money, Magnus Hirschfield… and possibly one more that I can’t think of now. It’s very exciting to know that the treasure trove of information the Kinsey provides will be getting so much exposure.

I start with the vertical files.  I create an overview of the box that we can pass along to the Alexander Street Press, since the finding aid is bare bones. I find that apparently, correspondence and financial documents related to Benjamin’s nonprofit foundation are threaded through the folders alongside blaring headlines from hundreds of newspaper clippings about men transforming into ladies. I scan, scan, scan. 400 DPI jpeg is the standard for this project. The naming convention finalized, I digitize.

11:50am – I leave the lab for lunch. The Kinsey is somewhat old-fashioned in that it closes each day from noon-1. It’s my only lunch break of the week, one that I probably wouldn’t take if I could opt out of it–the work hours are too valuable.

Nevertheless, I love my hour on Wednesdays. It feels luxurious to be able to walk to the union and not see anybody I know (usually), to be surrounded by undergraduates everywhere (or so they look to me). I can read and eat an apple and it’s just so reinvigorating, so different from the norm of eating at my desk or en route to a class or job. I feel… young. Which is silly because I am young. I come back feeling even more determined to work harder, longer days and nights, because to me that equates into the type of freedom that means carefree lunch breaks.  I won’t lie–on my way back to the Kinsey, I daydream a bit about lunch breaks in my future college town.

1pm – Lots more digitizing, NPR streaming in my earphones.

4:30pm – Leave work a half hour early to head back to the Information Commons in Wells Library; I’m scheduled to teach a class at 5.

4:45pm – I arrive to my fishbowl (aka Instruction Cluster, connected to the rest of the information commons through half glass “walls” leading to the ultimate distraction enviroment you can imagine). My sad-sack suede boots are soaked through from all the rain. I set up, log in, write stuff on the whiteboard. I request that anyone not in the cluster for C104, Business Presentations, leave. I discover that nobody has yet arrived for C104. I double check that my date, time and cluster are all correct–check, check, check. It’s bizarre that nobody is around yet. Usually folks start showing up, the instructor at least, around 15 minutes prior.

5pm – Nobody from the class is in the classroom. I reason that the scheduling must be wrong. I can’t believe that I left work early and the scheduling was wrong. I think of my timesheet, of the minutes/dollars wasted. I decide to give it 15 minutes.

5:17pm – I’m still in the classroom, writing an email to my Teaching & Learning supervisor. Some purposeful-looking undergrads enter the fishbowl. Are you here for C104? I ask. Yes, they are. Apparently their class actually starts at 5:30. Sigh.

5:30pm – I start teaching. On the agenda: an introduction to the Business/SPEA Information Commons, both the physical space and the resources offered; database walkthroughs (LexisNexis, ABI/Inform, Mintel Reports); citation resources. Usually instruction assistants create our own lesson plans, but there are so many sections of C104 that the instructors want to make sure they get the same information. Thus, we have a script.

I tell the students, “I want you to come away with two things: feeling comfortable starting to use library resources, particularly the databases, and feeling comfortable asking for help.” I tell them that databases (and the IU Libraries webpage in general) are labyrinthine and intimidating–but it gets better with practice. I tell them to dive into the muck and mess, seek out help when they come up against roadblocks, and figure it out well before the deadline for their project. I tell them that learning the gist of how to make databases work for them will make the rest of their tenure at IU (and after) easier–they’ll get better results in less time.

Tonight, I teach really well. I can feel it. (I taught a walk-in 200-level business workshop last week and it was awkward and hard and the students didn’t care… this week felt utterly different. I haven’t quite figured out why, though.) The class goes smoothly. I feel helpful. I feel “on.” I’m not an expert AT ALL on business matters or resources, so when we discuss public companies and subsidiaries and tickers and consumer demographics and I hold my own, um, it’s exciting. I leave really thrilled with how the class went.

6:45pm – Leave class. Catch up work, email management. A scholarship is due on Friday. A column I’m writing for the Midwest Archives Conference newsletter is due tomorrow, so I pull together links and information about digital collections pertaining to Hoosier history. I’m hungry and thinking longingly of Downton Abbey, yes, but it’s actually quite fun. For instance: Did you know that Amelia Earhart was a faculty member at Purdue University in West LaFayette, IN? Purdue even bought her the plane that she disappeared in during her trip across the Atlantic. I might’ve gone all my life without knowing this tidbit had I not agreed to write the column!

10:15pm – Catch the bus going home. The LSB just finished with a rehearsal, so we take the bus together. A shoulder for my aching head is modern romance for me.