My journey to this library was rather simple actually. I moved to Chattanooga three or so years ago, holding an entry-level IT job at the time. I was wildly unhappy with that job for a variety of reasons, and one day I sat down and talked about potential future plans with my spouse, Vix. I had never been to college before, and truly didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and Vix said to me, “What if you were a teacher?” To explain, Vix is an art teacher and when we met, they were working towards their education degree.
The idea of doing this, seeing the difficulties that they experienced and continue to experience daily, was intimidating. It was the only option, however, where I felt that sort of spark. That inspiration. “Yeah, I could give that a try!” I got excited. I applied to Chatt State and put in my two week notice at my old job once I was accepted.
That first semester of college was scary but thrilling. I was doing way better than I ever thought I would. Unfortunately, things on the financial front were getting dire. I needed a job, pretty badly. I applied for a student worker position at this library, but unfortunately there were no open positions, so I had to expand my search. I did substitute teaching for awhile, held a job at Belk for maybe 3 days before I decided that it was too much for me, and eventually landed at a position at a Circle K in Collegedale.
Working at the Circle K was pretty miserable, but I was paying the bills, if only barely. Eventually, a position for work study opened up here at the library, and I applied once more. This time I got an interview, and soon after a job offer! Sadly, I could only work 20 hours a week at the maximum, so I still had to stay on at Circle K to make ends meet.
That is until one day, Andrea told me that there was a permanent part time position opening up that would pay more than work study and allow me to work more hours. I immediately applied and bit my nails waiting through the process of interviewing and waiting to hear if I was going to get the job or not. Good news, you’re reading this blog post so you were kinda spoiled from the beginning on how that ended up!
I am still plugging away at classes here in Chatt State for now, but this work combined with my work study experience has cemented my decision to eventually work towards my MLIS so that I can try and be proper librarian in an academic library just like this one! Possibly even this one itself!
