A Fine Balance

Posted October 8, 2015 by Tara Pealer

If you’re a junior or senior in undergrad, it is likely that by now you have friends in grad school. Your grad school friends seem like they have their lives together. They know what they are doing, and what they want to do, and how to get there. (This is a lie.) And it may seem, to you, as it did to me, that there are two types of grad school students.

Type A, we’ll call them, is the type who is always studying. You haven’t seen them in months. You haven’t even seen them on Facebook in a while. They are doing well, you know, because they have always done well, but their entire life is now centered on completing their studies. You admire their dedication and passion, and have no clue how they manage to keep it up.

Type B, on the other hand, seems to always be doing “The Things You Wish You Were Doing.” They’re the ones with pictures of fancy food they made on Instagram. They went to that supercool event you figured you wouldn’t have time for because, well, classes. They blow up your social media whenever you go on. You want their life, but you have no clue how they are doing everything.

However, these aren’t the only two paths. Simmons LIS program, I’ve found, believes very firmly in a work/life balance. The Library Profession, as a whole, is a work-life balanced profession. To be a successful librarian, you can’t live in the library (to be honest, the library probably couldn’t afford that anyway). You have to go out and engage in your community. You have to, in fact, go do things.

So, as easy as it is to focus on just doing your studies, or on just trying to learn a whole new city, it’s important to strike that balance. I know that when I have friends coming up for the weekend, or if I’m headed home for a few days, I have to get my other work done when I can.

So, when I headed out to the SLIS Banned Books party last Friday, I knew that I would have to spend all of Sunday and most of Monday getting my homework and reading finished. I also knew, however, that I wouldn’t have missed interacting with my fellow students and having a lot of fun building relationships while learning about the importance of Banned Books week.