Why I'm Here

I've always been the girl who loved the library. Always had my nose buried in a book. Knew all the librarians by name and had my card number memorized. Spent evenings quietly in the last study carrel rushing through homework and then devouring books until my parents came to get me for dinner. Even when I went on to college I was one of the few people I knew to bring a stack of books for "fun"reading, when I wasn't otherwise engaged in friends, boys, the occasional bad decision, and, what now feels like, even less occasional studying or class attending.

Eventually I graduated (notice I didn't say grew up) and during my first week in my first ever apartment I made my way to the library for a card. It made me feel like an adult and at home in a city where I had just spent 4 years of college but had never really belonged to until that moment.

As they say, life happened and I worked crappy jobs and racked up huge fines when I got to busy with being young and in my twenties. Unlike many of my friends, coworkers, and peers I loved using public transportation for commuting as it gave me time for reading when I didn't feel I should be doing something else. Public transportation is actually what brought me to where I am right now.

I had been working as an assistant for a trade association for just under a year and wasn't happy. In fairness, I wasn't unhappy either, but writing thank you notes, taking minutes, and answering phones in an industry I found basically boring is just not what I envisioned at 24. I was on the metro one day, on my way to work, and, while I usually immersed myself in whatever I happened to be reading to the point where it was not unknown for me to miss my stop, that day I just couldn't focus. I didn't want to go to work and was, in fact, actively dreading taking minutes for a policy meeting later that afternoon. I thought "Dude, you just have to figure something out" and while I probably meant taking a weekend a way to recharge, it was at that moment I noticed the poster in front of me.

It was an ad for the School of Library and Information Science at my alma mater. "Huh" my mind said "Wouldn't working in a library be awesome?". I didn't admit it to myself yet, but that was the moment I decided to go to library school. I gave my parents, boyfriend, and myself a show of researching for a week, but by the end of the week was registered for the GREs and considering whether to stay in DC or move a bit closer to home with a school in Philadelphia or New Jersey. I eventually ended up in the school that started it all.

The rest as they say is history.