....change of heart.....

Currently, I'm working two jobs, both are "temporary part time."  Exactly what you don't want to land when you are looking for a full time job with benefits.  However, I'm working and have moola coming in.  More fortunate than many.

One of the positions I'm in is a professional reference librarian at Palo Alto College in San Antonio.  As we start the new semester, the library has a series of classes to help the students learn and develop their research skills.  I was assigned to teach the class focusing on Web Research, how to conduct, find reliable sources and how to evaluate if the sources are indeed, reliable.

My first response was to remain very calm while inside I was thinking....the first class is 10 days away and I'm not an expert in this subject, I've never taught (other than "mouse 101 for seniors" as I call my intro to computers for senior citizens, a very very informal class).  I'm in line for a full time position at my other part time temp job so I automatically thought....I need that job so I can QUIT here!  I don't want to do this!

So.....here I am, Monday.  First day back at the job since I got the assignment due to bad weather days.  Really, really not a big deal after all.  In the past two hours I've helped a number of students and I've got my course outline done, am putting final touches on the pre- and post- tests and will finalize the evaluation form.  I'm actually looking forward to teaching it.  That kind of scares me in that there is something in there that totally enjoyed this mega-nerdy crap.  Guess I've been too intent for too many years avoiding being a nerd. And yet when I'm almost 50 I get my Master's Degree in Library Science and officially become a librarian? Nerdiest.  But cool still, right?  Please?  Give me that.....

A few of my favorite quotes.......

‘the characteristic that most differentiates librarians from all the other occupational groups I worked with is a very weird and shockingly offbeat sense of humor. Librarians are very funny in some dark, devious and totally unexpected ways’ — Will Manley

When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. – Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones (who know he had it in him or that he had a secret longing to be a librarian)

Your lack of planning is not my emergency.

"I really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group.  They are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them. You know, they've had their budgets cut. They're paid nothing. Books are falling apart. The libraries are just like the ass end of everything, right?"

— Michael Francis Moore