Okay, I’m 30, however reluctantly. What am I going to do with it?
Would you believe me if I said I was thinking about going back to grad school?
Quit laughing. I said cut that out. I’m serious.
I am most assuredly not going back for a Ph.D. Got in on that game, crapped out, don’t care to wager any more on it. Nor is this decision entirely sour grapes. My friend Allen at UIUC GSLIS was more than willing to take me under his wing. He would have done right by me, because he’s like that.
He made that offer months ago, though. If I wanted a Ph.D bad enough, I would have done whatever was necessary to take it. I didn’t, so I don’t. QED.
And when I think about it, I know why I don’t. I still don’t trust academia. I still don’t like the way it operates. Worse than that, though, is the thought of getting through life writing about stuff instead of doing stuff. Meaning no offense to my husband, to AKMA, or to other genuine academics, I don’t operate that way. I don’t write. I do. Blogging and RPG fluff aside, I write only when writing is doing, when I am teaching or programming or the like.
I have trouble imagining myself writing for the sake of publication credits. I have trouble imagining myself writing grant proposals or empty project reports. (If the project doesn’t stand on its own, what was the point again?) I especially have trouble thinking about being forced to write, forced to negotiate the publication process. Misery incarnate.
So I’m not chasing a Ph.D. I want an MLS, a master’s of library science. Though it’s usually called “library and information science” these days.
When I look through the want ads, when I see people doing work I would like to do, when I see a need that I could fill—the key credential I don’t have is more often than not an MLS. (When it’s not, it’s generally a computer science degree, which is out of my reach as I haven’t the math or the skill at math to manage it. I was a solid A− or B math student through calculus, but my last math class was over a decade ago and I don’t miss it at all.)
I would be very competitive in the job market with an MLS plus the markup skills I already have and am still acquiring. No question about it. No question that I could be useful, either; libraries need markup artisans, and they’re short of them.
The UW’s MLS program has an elective track in Library Information Systems that sounds like just what I’m after. At first glance, it’s a kitchen-sink sort of thing that teaches everything from getting a server running to figuring out what to put on it. Dreamy.
I have a lot more homework to do before I decide to do this. Not least I have to figure out how to pay for it, and keep food on the table while I do it—not an insuperable problem, but an important one. And if I do do it, there’s the weary round of applications, recommendation-chasing, and all the other red tape.
Still… of all the things I might do, this opens the most doors and closes the fewest. I have felt paralyzed for some time over my job situation: overqualified for what I’m doing, unable to find something acceptable at my hit-or-miss level of qualification, underqualified for new work I would want to do. An MLS would open doors, doors I’d really like to see the other side of.
