I’ve had an interesting and slightly confusing time with work and career this year. When I was teaching in Old Crow last year, I began working part-time with Yukon Public Libraries. It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to work in a library, and the reality of it was pretty awesome. Even though the Old Crow Library isn’t that frequently utilized, I had a ball cleaning up and organizing the stacks, creating some after school programming and learning the library circulation system. It didn’t even much matter to me that so few people were using the service – it was just a good feeling to know I was helping to provide the option.
Upon returning to Whitehorse, I learned that the Whitehorse Public Library was looking for an on-call Library Assistant so I applied and won the position. My intention was to work in that position until September came and the school year started back up. However, I did not gain a full-time teaching position for September, and I found I enjoyed working at the library so much that September came and went, and I was still there. The job gave me a lot of satisfaction: I enjoyed interacting with the public, I loved being surrounded by books, my colleagues were awesome, and I just felt very happy in the position.
Still, I was wrestling throughout with the notion of whether I should be in the schools or not. I didn’t really miss being in schools, but I felt a lot of internal pressure to “use my degree” or “work in my field”. In February, this came to a head: I wasn’t getting many hours at the library so I sought out supplementary part-time work. After hearing about a part-time opportunity as an Educational Assistant with a local high school, I applied and was hired. The catch was – I couldn’t actually hold both positions as there was a conflict of interest with belonging to two different unions. The school also had full-time work to offer, and after getting only 15-20 hours/week for a few weeks, it was too hard to turn down.
Thus, I’m back in the schools now. I miss the library very much, and am still considering doing a Library Sciences degree and pursue a career in libraries. But that voice inside is still saying “use your degree!” – the degree I’ve already worked and paid for! I know it’s a common feeling among us Millennials, not knowing what we’re “meant to do” or even what we want to do. We are the first generation with SO MUCH CHOICE for careers and especially the first generation of women to have so much choice!! It’s wonderful we’re no longer boxed in, but also overwhelming. It’s scary to think we’ll make the wrong choice, and we’re plagued by FOMO – fear of missing out.
So I’m still pondering – do I work in schools? Libraries? Something else entirely? My train of thinking at the moment is to go with flow, as much as possible… and trust that I will end up where I’m meant to end up. As they say, life is about the journey, not the destination.
joie de vivre 