The Desired End

Posted December 2, 2013 by Sarah Barton

The long Thanksgiving weekend was a wonderful reprieve from classes, although Sunday was a quick snap back to reality when I had to finish a ten page research paper, create a PowerPoint overview of said paper, do an audio voiceover of said PowerPoint and post it to the course webpage, and work on a group project for my other class. Ok, so that description makes it sound a lot worse than it was, and it actually took less time than I expected to get everything done. (Then again, I am an eternal pessimist and figured it would take at least eight hours.) But all told, I am now much closer to graduating, both temporally (nine days!) and academically (two assignments), than I was at this time last week. Wahoo!

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but GSLIS is meant to be a means to an end, and I feel that I have absolutely reached my desired end. Courses like Corporate Libraries and Business Information Sources and Services helped point me toward that end. Courses like Information Organization and Technology for Information Professionals helped point me away from an end that might involve cataloging or systems administration. There were also courses like Knowledge Management, Archiving and Preserving Digital Media, and Reference and Information Services that didn’t necessarily point me toward an end, but introduced valuable skills and concepts. And on top of those were my public library job that pointed me away from a career in public libraries and my research internship that pointed me toward a career in research. When it was happening, it all seemed like a giant hodgepodge of library-related stuff. In retrospect, it all seems to make sense.

If you’re coming to GSLIS without a desired end in mind, don’t worry – I started the program with the sole hope that I would leave it with a job. What I didn’t realize was that I would have a variety of classes, two internships, and a part-time job during my GSLIS tenure that would all magically come together to help shape my desired end. Now here I am, at the end of the program and the beginning of my career. Come to think of it, perhaps GSLIS is actually meant to be a means to a beginning.