It's 2015! Holy cannoli! I guess I should do some sort of review, right? Everyone does that nowadays. So here we go!
January: my hair was so short, you guys. I also had to regrow the top layer of skin on my lip after I learned the hard way that I was allergic to bananas. I also, on January 1st, officially became a librarian.
February: snow came to Cardiganland, for once. I also started dating my boyfriend. (Whoa!) Oh yeah--I also learned to play Call of Duty. Is this good? Is this bad? I'm really not sure.
March: I spent most of my time at work, getting ready for our first library con & summer reading!
April: I spent quite a bit of time buried under my horses' winter coat, clipping it off his body. And Concert Calendar 2014 started with a bang at an Against Me! concert, and then a whimper when Miley Cyrus cancelled on us.
May: This was one of you guys' all time favourite outfits! Library con was a go, and it was a big hit! (We're already working on 2015!!) Dani sent me a giant box of clothing that changed my style and my life, and I fulfilled a long held dream to see Vampire Weekend live.
June: summer reading commenced, and in short order, I spent a long weekend in New York City for the Governors Ball Music Festival, I had to put our barn cat down (RIP Ziggy), and I spent a week in Vancouver for work (and fun!). The month was a total whirlwind, up and down, but capped off with a Say Anything concert, I can't help but look at June as a good time.
July: America happened, and I wrote about my time in New York, which was a partially overly emotional experience. Summer reading ended, and one of my best friends from work left the library to get her Ph.D. (I miss her, but I'm very proud!)
August: FALL OUT BOY. MILEY CYRUS. NICKEL CREEK. Concert Calendar 2014 kicked into very high gear after summer reading ended, and I got injected directly in the tailbone. I think it's still crying in pain. I also made it a full year without dying my hair!
September: I survived housesitting and DragonCon, the latter for the second year in a row. One of my best friends from college, E., got married, and my boyfriend and I travelled to Virginia Beach for the wedding (and a ton of Wawa trips!). Football season started, finally, which was great--but I ended the month on a bad note, when my doctor broke the news that I was going to need back surgery to correct a recurred disc in my lower back.
October: I survived a ride at the fair and will never do it again. My boss and I presented very successfully at the state library association annual conference, and I went under the knife for a second time. My time in the hospital was comical, but even better, it was worth it: the surgery was a success!
November: I spent most of the month recovering from surgery, watching HGTV with my mom while hopped up on Percoset and working on cross stitching stuff. I went back to work part time a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, which was an ultimately successful endeavour!
December: holidays ahoy! My boyfriend and I travelled to Asheville for lots of Christmas lights, good food, and mountains. I went back a week later with S., L., & M. (see below) for more Christmas lights, and it was awesome. I got a new pair of glasses, so I can still see really well! And the holidays attacked, but it was worth every moment of utter insanity. & my hair has gotten WAY longer since January!
I hope you all had a wonderful 2014. I'm sure I'll talk about 2015 in my next post, but for now, looking back at the year that was: I feel pretty lucky. Aside from putting Ziggy down and having back surgery, 2014 was a pretty stellar year. I survived, and even thrived, in my first year as a librarian, I made some new friends, and snagged an amazing guy. I even used my passport! Parts of me will miss 2014, but I'm looking forward to what 2015 brings.
Happy new year!
Click for large.
After this post, I decided to try a slightly different approach for my portfolio headshot to see if I could come up with something more creative, and that offers both more personality and more clarity as to who I am & what I do. So I got my new glasses and decided to try displaying some books, but in a clever way. This is the result. My boss was truly amazing and took the pictures for me, so I could focus on balancing this stack on my head. I cannot say that this would have ended well had I been using a remote! I'm really happy with this picture, and very excited that it turned out as well as it did. This photo may seem typically librarian-y, but from what I've found, I'm one of the few students graduating in December with any interest in working with adults in public libraries. Also, I sure as hell ain't shushing anyone, so there's that.
For those wondering, the books on my head, from top to bottom, are:
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell: I've never read this book, but I thought it was apt to have it on the top of a pile of books on my head. Gladwell is a very attractive author for readers who want to learn about social sciences but don't want anything aggressively over their heads.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple: Only a handful of books have been able to make me laugh like this one did. A favourite RA go-to book for anyone looking for a smart laugh.
To America with Love by A. A. Gill: Another book I haven't read, but I wanted to include a more recent nonfiction book and Gill writes about United States minutia that fascinates a lot of readers. Great for Americana fans.
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach: Hands down one of my favourite books of all time. I read it every October. Great for an intelligent reader, readers who like dysfunctional families and dramas, and strongly character-driven books.
The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media by Brooke Gladstone and Josh Neufeld: An excellent graphic novel about the history of media and how the industry has had a lasting influence on society. Graphic novels are excellent for reluctant readers, and a couple of the guys have really enjoyed this one. Also good for teens in civics classes.
I plan to include the information listed above--or at least the titles and authors--with the photo that will be the opening page of my portfolio. I think it adds another touch of personality to have that info there instead of leaving the reader curious but straining to see the titles of some of the books.
Also: what's up new glasses!
This Introduction Page welcomes visitors to the end-of-program portfolio. It provides and overview of the content and how to navigate the portfolio. A photograph is also a desirable part of the introduction and should be a head shot or photograph taken in a professional setting.
I have to pick a "headshot" for my portfolio for school, and this is the one I currently have picked out. I know it's old--from March--but I am struggling to find a photo that evenly balance professional with personal. I don't want to do some dumb against-a-white-background headshot, but I also don't want to do something ridiculous. What do you think? Should I do something more recent, with my hair short? I'm getting new classes next week (SO excited, you guys!), so should I wait until I get those? If you don't think this picture is right, what would you envision? My friends and coworkers think I'm overthinking this, and I should "just use whatever's on (my) blog", but this is the very first thing my advisor will see when she opens my portfolio and since this my graduation hinges on this portfolio, I want to put my very best face forward. & I know I'm not smiling, but that's kind of standard. I have other pictures where I'm smiling, but I'm not sure how professional they look comparatively.
So: thoughts?
"Will you play sexy librarian with me?"
I've heard this a number of times before. Sometimes jokingly, sometimes seriously. Being a librarian runs the weird spectrum of either being a stuffy, angry old lady with a severe bun and severer glasses to being super-sexy with a half open button down and and a short, super tight pencil skirt. Compare these two images, for example.
Kill me now, please.
I didn't get into librarianship because I was a grump old coot or a sex bomb. People don't (usually) pick their life careers based on how they look or want to look to others. But there's no other profession, I think, that has the level of physical stereotyping that librarianship does. I don't know about you, but when I was young, I never encountered either of the librarians above. My first librarian was a 30something African-American woman with short hair who wore khakis. My second librarian was a grumpy old man, a rarity in the field. I work in a public library now, which is what the average person thinks of when he or she hears "librarian", and my coworkers now run the sheer gamut, though they are mostly women, and a solid 80% of them don't wear pencil skirts or buns.
I've never introduced myself as a librarian: I'm not really officially one until December 16th, and I hate telling people I'm something I'm not, even though most people look at all library employees the same way. We're all librarians, from the pages who shelve the books to the head of HR to the systems department, who may not even know how to work our staff client that handles everything from searching for books to cataloging and patron information (our ILS, for those of us who really are librarians). We're all librarians, even though we're not, and we're crammed into these two stereotypes, even though we're not.
I don't generally blog my outfits as a librarian and how a librarian dresses, but just how I dress on a day to day basis. Most of these outfits are for work, of course, but I also write about what I wear to concerts and weddings. I am a librarian at neither of those things. But aren't we all defined by what we do? When someone says "tell me about yourself" or "who are you", don't you first explain your job? And at heart, I am a librarian. I just wish that didn't mean that I simultaneously dragged "sexy" and "grumpy" behind me like a ball and chain.
For a view of the actual broad range of librarian style, take a look at Amber's Check Us Out linkup from Friday. Screw buns and pencil skirts!
