Incoherent Scribblings

A Matter of Time

I have been deliberately silent concerning my job search as a professional librarian during the past few months here on my blog.

I have talked about the state of affairs at length with my family and close friends, but I have to admit in the age of doocing that I just haven’t felt 100% comfortable discussing the situation here for fear it might affect the eventual outcome of the process. In addition to that, I guess I am also a little superstitious: I felt like if I blogged about my job hunt I might jinx it.

And though this is my personal blog and if you are reading it you are more than likely interested in my life and all it involves, I really didn’t want to bore my readers with stories of writing cover letters, scanning transcripts, filling out online applications, or waiting anxiously for the mailperson every day.

Given my particular circumstances (nearly 5 years out of my field, unemployed and living overseas) I wasn’t sure how long my job search would take, but I knew that it would be a great assessment of how durable my library education and Master’s Degree really are.

Last summer when I made the decision to come back the U.S. and reenter my profession, I had hoped to be working in an academic library by the beginning of 2007. It seemed like an attainable goal that would nicely correspond with the start of a new semester. Unfortunately, it was not to be and as of today I am still looking for an opportunity to prove that my skills as a reference librarian did not diminish while I was away.

However, I have had interviews: Phone interviews, email interviews, and on-campus interviews. Though I was not offered any of those positions, the interviews were not a waste of my time. At the end of one phone interview that was for a technical services position, I realized that I am a public services librarian at heart and I belong in a reference and instruction department. I have also learned that I no longer want web services to be a main component of my job and that just by exchanging a few emails a person can get a pretty good idea of whether or not he or she might or might not want to work with the people on the other end.

Of course, I have had rejection letters too. The ones that come from institutions that were long shots or I never heard from beyond the standard we-have-received-your-application correspondence don’t bother me too much and I just file them away. The ones that come from places I thought I had a good chance tend to hurt a little more, but when they come I just grin and bear it.

Oh, I’d say my batting average hasn’t been too bad and that I need be patient just a little longer because something tells me that it is only a matter of time…