Taking a breath

The semester is finished, and I passed with flying colors. This was an amazing semester for several reasons. First, it was the first semester of what has been my goal since beginning college in 2001. Back then, I took my first class, Intro to Psychology, just to see if I could do this "college thing for old people" when I was at the ripe old age of 30. Going back to school was one of the biggest hurdles I had ever faced. I found that class after class filled something within me that I had lost: my independence and the ability to fight personal demons that had always told me I couldn't succeed on my own. Second, this semester, while working in a very challenging position as a professional in the library field (finally) was bittersweet as I could finally see the inside world of librarians and the field of information. Third, grad school is DIFFICULT! Much more so than I thought, and yes, I thought it would be a challenge. However, I love reading the endless material published about different aspects of library science. I learned so much about this world of information. I ensconsed myself in a new world of acronyms like FRBR, MARC, ERIC, and a new technical language that includes indexing, tags, subfields, and descriptors. I wont even try to encapsulate it in a few paltry paragraphs here. My mind is still spinning on everything I learned.

The summer semester starts June 4 and I am currently enrolled in a class on Young Adult materials and selection processes which shouldn't be anywhere near as technical as this semester. This is a break, believe me. As a Young Adult librarian, this will be both fascinating and informative, and will hopefully give me some tools to use on the job because right now? I'm a fish out of water still.

~ A