Taking Time To Figure It Out

Posted September 19, 2024 by Erin Wood

After finishing my undergraduate degree in the Spring of 2020, I knew I needed a break. I always knew that I wanted to go to graduate school, but I couldn’t decide what for. I had gotten my bachelor’s degree in writing with the goal of doing just that, write. However, after I graduated, I realized that I didn’t know what I wanted to do full-time. I was worried that if I wrote for my job every day, I would lose inspiration to write books, which was always, and still is, my goal. So, this left me asking myself what I did want to do. I felt like I had been rushing from one thing to another all my life and had never taken time to actually think.

I ended up deciding to take a step back and keep working as a barista. I loved my job, and honestly in the Spring of 2020 it was a miracle I still had one to begin with, so staying where I was and figuring it out seemed like the best thing to do. I spent a lot of time learning to navigate who I was outside of an academic setting and reconnected with the version of myself that loved reading for the sake of reading, not for analyzing every word and writing papers on them. Getting to know that side of myself again was so crucial in figuring out who I was and what I cared most about.

I remember the exact moment I realized I wanted to go into library science. I was working in the kitchen of the café I helped manage at the time while my coworker was talking about how she had been going to the library a lot recently. I was cleaning something in the triple sink when a switch turned on in my brain. I turned to her and said, “wait… should I be a librarian?” Ever since then, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I started looking into programs and the different paths of librarianship. As soon as I learned more about rare book libraries, I knew that was where I wanted to be. I love books and I love old things, it was perfect. I applied to Simmons and the rest is history.

Once I arrived on campus, I realized that a lot of my peers had much more “conventional” stories as to how they discovered the program than I did. I was a barista of six years surrounded by people who have seemingly all worked in libraries, archives, and museums. I immediately felt alienated, like I shouldn’t be in the program at all. I got really stuck in my head wondering if I deserved to take up a space in my classes, and I am certain that I wasn’t the only student who felt this way. It is so easy to compare yourself to everyone around you. The thing is, it’s okay to take time and figure things out. It doesn’t matter how you realized you wanted to go into the field, and it doesn’t matter if it took you four, or ten, or forty years to get to this point. We all ended up here for a reason.

I know that when I was first looking into and beginning the program, I could have benefitted from seeing the perspective of someone else like me. So, I am here to be that person for others. Apply, enroll, speak up in class, ask questions, get involved. You deserve to be here, and you are wanted here.