Vote 2005: The Results Are... Still Not In

Recap: In 2003, Master Fob graduates with a BA in English, then goes straight into an English MA program. At the same time, he starts working at a library and digs it. As he comes to identify himself more and more as a librarian, he begins to wonder why the heck he's getting an MA in English instead of a Master's of Library Science, which he will ultimately have to get if he wants to go anywhere in the world of librarianship. Fobby is not one to act impulsively, though, or rather he is not one to impulsively unmake a decision that he may or may not have made impulsively (perhaps because to unmake impulsively would be to admit that the original making was impulsive). At any rate, he finishes the English MA, in the process deciding definitively that he wants to be a librarian, not an English professor.

Then, in 2005, Fobby rather impulsively gets a job teaching English at the local college as an adjunct professor. He loves it. In December, he impulsively decides that he wants to apply for graduate school. He's leaning toward the English PhD route but still can't give up the vision of himself as Master of the Library, so he does what any sensible person would do: he lets his blogreaders decide. Depending on how you count it, the vote was something like 8 to 5 in favor of English, so Fobby applied to 2 PhD programs and 1 MLS program. Secretly, the only program he cared about was the English PhD program at the University of Washington, so when that was the first program he heard from and what he heard from them was "We don't want you," he was devastated.

The Story Since Then: Besides being the type of person who likes to pretend he is not impulsive, Fobby is also the type of person who does not allow himself to be devastated by anything for very long. Devastation and depression and all other forms of unhappiness have been deemed unproductive by whatever powers control Fobby's mind, so on average he only allows himself to be sad for about five and a half minutes before deciding to do something else (we'll save a discussion of the psychological healthiness of this practice for another day). In the case of being rejected by UW's English program, Fobby allowed himself to be profoundly sad for six minutes, in which time he posted about said profound sadness, then he went for a walk with S-Boogie. Then he came home and took a short nap and started thinking of how he'd envision his future now that UW's English PhD program was no longer part of it.

That's when I realized that I'm not enjoying teaching all that much this semester. (It's also when I realized that I'm tired of talking about myself in the third person.) Always having lesson plans and grades hanging over my head stresses me out big time. Considering the fact that, on top of my family and whatever career I have, I will always be trying to squeeze as much writing time into my life as possible, a career like librarianship where I go home at the end of the day and I'm done would be a lot nicer than one like professorship, which never ends.

And really, I love working at the library. I love books. I love information. I love order. I love working as a reference librarian, doing detective work to help patrons track down the name of that poem they heard once in third grade. I love the idea of working as a collection developer, deciding how many copies of the latest Louis Sachar novel to buy for the library. I love the idea of being a cataloguer, figuring out whether to put Persepolis in the 741s with graphic novels or in the 955s with books about Iran (yes, Katya, we still use Dewey here; I'll adapt to LOC when I work at an LOC library). When I was 16 I created a database to catalog all my comic books, tracking character appearances chronologically across various titles. If that is not librarian material, I don't know what is.

I worry that this renewed zeal for librarianship is a defense mechanism, a way to tell UW's English program, "Screw you, I didn't want you anyway," and a preparation to say the same to University of Hawaii's English program if they reject me too. If UW's MLS program rejects me, I'm afraid I'll be out of defenses. I might just have to come up with another impulsive plan.