On Graduating from School and Getting a Job
was crawling through my archives this morning and came across this little rant that I wrote years ago, during my first, horrible, post-grad school job at the Cornell University Library. I know several of you Gentle Readers are in school right now, and I thought you might enjoy the sentiment:
First of all, and lets just get this out of the way: a full-time job is actually a pretty shoddy reward for 2.5 years of graduate school stress.
Yes, I’m grateful and all, glad to be here, nice to meet ya, etc. but frankly, I think I was looking for something along the lines of “congratulations on your degree, here’s your houseboat, now get out of here you scamp.”
I suppose having a stable schedule and slightly-more-realistic paychecks is reward enough, but lately I’ve had to face what seems to happen any time you put enormous effort into something. Which is, a rather slow transition into something different that requires enormous effort.
Like learning not to scream when someone suggests you attend the Metadata Working Group Meeting.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Or how about learning to smile and nod when someone says, “You’re fresh out of library school – you should take over this project because of your ideas reflect current trends.”
May 15th, 2008 at 8:16 am
The transition to working life can certainly be challenging. I particularly miss being able to sleep in, not to mention being able to long forward to long summer and winter holidays.
May 18th, 2008 at 6:33 am
ahhh. To have your problems. I should probably write a post, “On Graduating from School and Looking for a Job”. I do still get to sleep in…
May 21st, 2008 at 11:00 am
They must have mentioned something in library school about getting houseboats upon graduation because that’s what I was expecting too!