I 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.
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.”
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.
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…
They must have mentioned something in library school about getting houseboats upon graduation because that’s what I was expecting too!