Week 3: Digging

Hello and welcome back to my reflections!

This week was more or less the same. I've finalized the dates for my workshops, and I finally gave them both titles! The first one will be on November 5th, entitled, "Under the Influence: Using Social Media to Inspire Paper Topics," which will delve into the idea of using algorithmic tracking and specific academic hashtags to get the creative juices flowing for students starting their research papers.

The second will be the week after on November 11th, which I am titling, "What's the Drama with Primary Sources and Archives?" I actually got to spend some time in the archives this week pulling the items I would like to use. It was a lot of fun; it smelled of old books. Honestly, the brief moments I get to spend in the archives only makes me want to pursue a job in archiving even more. I actually found an internship at the archives in CSU-Dominguez Hills that I'm planning to apply to for next quarter. I'm very excited.

Also! Big week at the reference desk for me. It's midterms for the CSUs, so I had a ton of reference questions all week. I barely had time to work on my other projects this week because I had so little down time on the desk. It's definitely great to see what the actual practice is like for librarians on the desk because they already know the students patterns, and trust me, there are patterns. Half of the people I worked with had waited until the night before to work on their projects haha.

I'm still working on my application packet, which theoretically shouldn't be hard considering that I have successfully written resumes and cover letters before, it's just more nerve-wracking now because it makes my future seem so real. I think it was easier for me last year to suspend the reality because of how far finishing my MLIS seems, but I am on track to finish this June. So now I have to really think about my future and that's scary. Exciting, but also scary. But a good scary. A scary that makes me want it more.