Sometime in autumn, 2009, I sat down and wrote up my first three year plan. There wasn’t much there – despite what you might think of me, I don’t micromanage that far ahead in time. I wanted to do a little macro-managing. Draw a box around Spring semester. “Turn 25,” “Turn 26,” “Turn 27.” A red line across the calendar when my student loans are due.

I have now reached the box that reads “Apply for Jobs.” I’d like to say that I’m feeling less anxious about ending school and finding employment than I did in 2007 when I finished my Bachelors, but I’m not sure that’s true. No, I am not having the severe mental breakdown that was my final semester in college. That’s good. I think I might die if that happened again. But I’m feeling that “The Whole World Is Out There, Jessica, And You Damn Well Better Choose Wisely Otherwise You Will Die Poor, Unhappy, and Alone.”

Yes. Apparently that’s what was waiting for me in that “Apply for Jobs” box at the end of my little calendar. Complete a challenging graduate program, continue to work and pay your bills, and do it all, with a smile, and, when you have a minute, decide your fate.

I’m being ultra-dramatic. Noted. But this is a hard state for me to be in. It is easy to let myself be too negative. I spend about 90% of each day being too negative.

Here is the 10%.

 

1. I currently spend a significant portion of my life working with undergraduates. I have a lot of negative things to say about working in academia, in general, and even some negative things to say about the current crop of undergraduates and their issues with technology/self-reliance/entitlement/hyper-achievement.

But at the end of the day, I get excited when a new crop of students arrives. Freshmen are fun: I get excited to meet them. To make little undergraduate friends. To watch them change, often dramatically, usually for the better. The group of students I met on my first day of work in 2009 are finishing their junior year now. I feel sappy about that.

This makes me feel like I could work with college students for the long run.

 

2. I helped a patron at the library who wanted to find information social workers and their career satisfaction.

I asked if she was applying for the social work program at my school, and she revealed herself to be a high school senior.

Looking back, I can see where I changed my reference-providing tactics. I explained the difference between databases and catalogs more clearly. I jotted down notes for her to navigate our website more easily. I suggested some search terms that I thought would be more helpful, more specific.

At first, I wondered if I was being condescending. But then I thought, that hey, maybe every patron I work with might like a few notes to figure out where things are on the website, a few call numbers, a friendlier, more welcoming demeanor.

Learning how to give great service to teenagers, I think, teaches you how to give great service to anyone.

3. There are a lot of jobs. There are a lot of places to live. There are a lot of jobs in a lot of places to live and I have very few mechanisms that are allowing me to narrow down my choices in any significant way.

I spent 90 minutes applying for a job just because it was in a place that I might want to live, and I felt mildly qualified for the position.

The more time I spent filling out the application, the more time for doubt to creep in. Do I even want this job? Would it make it worth living in the place I wanted to live? Would I be able to even sound like an intelligent person at a job interview? Assuming I get the position, would I actually be any good at it? Would I even enjoy it?

I decided not to apply. After wasting 90 minutes of my life, I vented on Facebook. A former library supervisor friend of mine responded with this:

“The job market sucks. The question are, IF I take this job will it give me what the qualifications I need for a better job in a few years? IF I live in this city for a few years, will the job qualify me to work were I want in a few years? IF I take this job will I have better references to get what I want in a few years? Good luck. This is a long term game.”

I was asking the wrong questions. Even if I don’t know what kind of job I want or where I want to live, I still know where I want to be in my career. I still know what I want my life to look like. This is an easy litmus test for selecting jobs. For now, I am going to apply for jobs that will set me on a path to get where I want to go, career-wise. I’m going to operate on the assumption that my personal goals will fall in line, no matter what job I have or where I end up.

And where do I want to be? I want to be an active and influential part of the world of children’s literature.

I want to be creating, not consuming.

I want to be constantly learning.

I want to be ambitious.

Art from Marla Frazee’s Stars