I wanted to be a teacher even as a little kid. This aspiration took many shapes over the years. When I entered college, I hoped to eventually become a high school foreign language teacher. I ended up majoring in history (after exploring several other majors) when I decided that I really wanted to teach history to college students.
The main thing that I learned about myself while pursuing my master’s degree in history is that I do not have the patience to focus on one subject for my whole career. The deep dive into history was fun for a while, but I did not want to spend the rest of my life with the deceased instead of the living!
While working toward the master’s in history, I found work in a library at a small college. There, my job entailed purchasing books and media and preparing them for circulation to the campus. The work was interesting to me and opened my eyes to the possibility of working in an academic library. No two days are ever the same in a library! I was excited about working with technology, especially since the internet had become an essential information tool by this time. I was also interested to learn that many academic librarians spend a lot of time teaching students how to use different information tools. Best of all, I learned that most librarians are expected to be generalists, as opposed to specializing in one subject area.
I became convinced that I was better suited to librarianship than becoming a historian, so I earned a master’s in library and information science. I’ve never looked back! I found a career that I love that allows me to teach students how to access information about many different subjects. My current focus at Chattanooga State is assisting students and faculty in the nursing and allied health programs, which is particularly rewarding because the health sciences are such dynamic subject areas that makes extensive use of information technologies.
1 comment:
Welcome Sarah!
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