Expectations
The other day I got a lovely email from the senior programmer on a marquee digital-library project, one I’ve known about for ages and drooled over as long as I’ve known about it. They do the kind of thing I was expecting to do when I got out of library school.
And am not doing, as a matter of fact. I’m doing something that resembles what I thought I’d be doing in, well, almost exactly no way at all.
I introduce myself these days as a “digital archivist,” because it makes people’s eyes light up with enough understanding to go on with. I don’t use my official job title because it makes people’s eyes light up with “WTF?” Either way, what I do is a long way from text wrangling. I’m a petit-bourgeois shopkeeper now, not a peasant artisan.
Funny thing is, I’m not complaining. I’m working on several entirely new bags of tricks. Who’d have thought the blunt text churl could smile and smile and be a villein? (Sorry. Irresistible.) I was weaned on SGMLish hierarchy, but I’m adapting to relational SQL just fine, thanks. I still find Java a deeply irritating language—verbose, redundant, and clunky—but I don’t automatically flee to Python, either. Aside from the annoyance of clearing rights, which is an annoyance that I have got to find better ways to handle, I like what I do.
This comes up because I’m trying to help a new librarian of my acquaintance (graduated when I did, though not from my institution) find a job. She has unfortunately decided that she doesn’t want the jobs that her training best fits her for, and she’s a tough sell (zero experience, crowded field) for the job she says she wants.
I think she ought to play to her strengths, even if she doesn’t want to be in that particular specialty all her life. It’s such a fluid world, once your foot’s in the door. I’m not doing what I thought I’d be doing, or what I was initially trained up to do. That’s just fine. Heck, if I’d stuck with my first post-college or post-grad-school job, I’d still be answering phones and typing memos. Your first pro job isn’t your destiny, not if you’ve got any gumption.
I’m not sure she’s hearing me, though. Discouraged—even though her abortive job search was maybe half the length mine was!—she’s working retail, and not sending out applications. I’m hoping I’ll be able to goose her back into the hunt after the new year.
As for me, the wind is blowing rumors of medium- to long-term plans that may make good use of this old artisan’s sinewy text-wrangling muscles. I’m content to wait and see.