I've had a variation on this conversation a couple of times in the last couple of days. My friend Michelle and I are discussing laminating it on a card and handing it out at parties to preempt people. Not that we're bitter. Our working theory is that people don't ask these sorts of questions of, say, investment bankers because it's obvious why someone would want to be an investment banker (i.e., big piles of money). Librarianship, however, remains a veiled mystery to some, as you shall see.
OTHER PERSON: So, what do you do?
ME: I'm in grad school.
OP: Oh, for what?
ME: Library science.
(Pause.)
OP: You have to have a master's for that?
ME: To be a professional librarian, yeah.
OP: Huh. So what are your classes about? The Dewey Decimal System? [Melvil Dewey is invariably mentioned.]
ME: Um, not really. [I try to explain a class I'm currently taking and why I find it cool.]
OP: Well. How'd you get interested in that?
ME: That's a good question.
OP: Do you really like to read?
ME: Yeah, but that's not really why. [I try to explain access to and organization of information succinctly. This rarely works.]
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3 comments:
I went to library school more than 30 years ago. I am sorry to see that the assumptions have not changed.
However, I am grateful that more people have not figured out what fun it is to be a librarian. A job was hard enough to find without lots more competition.
Good luck with grad school.
Thanks, WL. I think it's fun too...but apparently in an inexplicable way.
omg. deja vu. i am having to have this conversation FOR you to other people. because many of my UofL friends do not know you (since you and Eliot and my Isaac and many others escaped en MASS--haha), I get to tell them about my BFF who is in grad school for her MLS (except I don't use acronyms cuz they wouldn't get it). then the forewritten conversation or one of its variants ensues. rather sad, really. and eff the Dewey Decimal system, man! there is more to life. like, the Library of Congress.
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