I have to admit that I only read a few library blogs. However, one of the ones I read recently answered a meme entitled “how I became a librarian” and ever since I read it I thought I should answer it too.
So, exactly how did I become a librarian?
Once upon a time, there was a little blonde girl who liked to read…
I am sure that is how you are anticipating this story begins and to an extent that is true. When I was little my family lived around the corner from Small Town Iowa Public Library and my mom and I spent many a happy hour there.
However, the story actually starts a few months before I left for college. When I got accepted to college I had a ton of paperwork to fill out and that included paperwork related to the work study program that I qualified for. I knew from an inside connection that freshmen usually got stuck working in the cafeteria unless they specifically indicated there was somewhere else on campus they wanted to work.
Well, as you can imagine I had no desire to get stuck in the cafeteria washing dishes, so my mom suggested that perhaps I might get to work in the library if I requested it. It sounded like a good idea to me, so I requested the library on the paperwork and when I got to college a few months later I learned that I would be working in the library.
I worked in the library all four years I was in school and a couple of summers to boot. I worked in circulation and remember wishing that I was the one that answered the reference questions that I referred to the librarian, but other than that I absolutely loved working in the library.
As you may remember, I was an English major in college and as I approached my senior year I realized that although I had plans to write The Great American Novel, I probably wasn’t going to make a living doing it. (Yes, I still have plans to write that novel… someday.) I didn’t want to be a teacher and I didn’t want to work at Chain Restaurant ABC for the rest of my life. What was I going to do?
Naturally I decided that I should go to grad school. 
Although my first thoughts of grad school focused on continuing with English, by this time with the support and encouragement of the library director I had begun thinking that getting an MLS (Master of Library Science) was not only something I might enjoy, but something that might also get me a job. Honestly, I wanted both. I wanted an advanced degree in English and I wanted to be a librarian.
I had such a hard time making up my mind that I missed the deadline to take the GRE and as a result ended up working through a temp agency at a dead-end job for a few months after I graduated.
As you can imagine after working at my boring dead-end job for a few weeks I realized that if I didn’t go back to school I would probably kill myself, so I began preparing for the GRE and making a list of schools that had both a library program and a graduate English program.
During the months after I graduated from undergraduate school I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do and finally came to the conclusion that I would go to library school first. It was the late 90s, libraries were becoming more and more technology-oriented, and technology-related jobs were booming. It seemed like a win-win situation.
So that is what I did. I went to library school, got my MLS, got a job, quit my job, ran away to get married, lounged around as a domestic goddess for a few years, got divorced, and a year ago I ended up back in libraries and have been working here at West Texas Town University ever since.
And that is the story of how I became a librarian.
