Caveat Lector

Ed Cortez, for all he like to killed me when I told him he’d won the student vote for faculty speaker (I ran the survey), was his usual charming, articulate self when he got up to give his address. I value the two courses I took with Ed, and UW-SLIS is assuredly going to miss him.

I got David to pin my little “librarian” pin on me after the SLIS ceremony, and wore it proudly all day. I’m looking at it on my desk now and grinning another of those lunatical grins. Watching the long, long parade of new bachelor’s degrees cross that stage, I was drawn to people with grins like mine—utterly thrilled with their accomplishment, and not ashamed or afraid to show it. I thought about all my Spanish students from back in the day (they’re long graduated by now, all of ’em) and wished them well.

The weather behaved itself with notable courtesy, staying bright and cheerful for the entire SLIS ceremony. It clouded up over lunch, but waited to rain until all of us last-half Letters and Science graduates were safely ensconced in the Kohl Center. By the time we got out, the rain was over. Seeing as how I had been braced for a thoroughly dismal day, I’m grateful.

The Kohl Center ceremony started with a fanfare from six music students on those great long heraldic trumpets, played in tune and in perfect time. Very, very cool. Weepy moment for me, because wow, fanfare! (I’ve played fanfares on recorder before, but I have to admit that brass fanfares are far more authoritative.)

Our little troupe of new librarians sitting in a row at the Kohl Center sported just about the only red-and-white MA hoods there. Journalism was out in force, as were Social Work and Music, but the professional MSes are yellow-and-red, and poor Music is stuck with pink-and-red. This is, of course, because we librarians get just about the only professional, terminal MAs that the UW offers. For almost everybody else, the MA is just a steppingstone on the way to a Ph.D.

(Or not, of course. But people leaving with a “consolation master’s” don’t generally feel they’ve accomplished anything much, and don’t go to graduation. I don’t need to tell you what I think of a system that inculcates that kind of thinking, do I? Right, didn’t think so.)

The scarcity of red and white did give rise to another thought, though. We academic librarians pretty much have to have a second master’s in another discipline to progress in our field. (So, yes, this means that some of the sweat, blood, and tears I gave the Department from Hell is now redeemed, and yes, that’s meaningful to me.) Part of what a department is saying when it says “We don’t grant a terminal master’s” is “Go away, you librarians. We aren’t interested in you; you have nothing to offer us.”

Wow, what utter arrogant wank that is.

I hear through the grapevine (okay, okay, at the Beta Phi Mu dinner) that the local Latin American and Iberian Studies bibliographer position is opening up shortly. (Liaison librarian. Area-studies librarian. Whatever they’re calling it these days.) I won’t be applying, even if Perdóndaris doesn’t come through with an offer (and I still hope they do, I still hope they do!). Aside from not much liking collection development, I just can’t imagine starting out my career working with some of the same folks who broke me into a million shards of uselessness.

Don’t let that stop you from applying, though, if you’ve got the stuff. My trauma is my trauma, and hasn’t got anything to do with you. I do wonder, though, whether they’d be able to respect one of their own rejects as a skilled and talented professional in her own right. Sorta doubt it, frankly.

But that’s all right. You know what? That’s all right. They’ll find someone, and me—I’ll find a place to respect me.