Librarian

I think I would really like to go back to school. The pursuit of knowledge thrills me. The idea of expanding my mind to its limits while furthering research in an academic field excites me. Moreover, if I hide out in school for a couple years, maybe the job market will be in an upswing when I come out.

I’ve been considering PhD programs in media studies for a while now, such as the University of Wisconsin’s Media and Cultural Studies program or Northwestern’s Screen Cultures program. However much the prospect of studying television sitcoms for the rest of my life entices me, it also gives me pause. Who would this help? Who cares? This kind of program truly would be research for the sake of academics in the field itself and no further. I’ve never been much of a do-gooder, but I’ve always thought that at some point I might do something meaningful. Plus, I don’t really like the idea of having “She watched sitcoms for a living” on my headstone.

I’m still going to apply for these programs (my chances of getting in are pretty slim anyway) but now I’m looking at shorter, more practical programs. Masters degrees seem to be the new bachelors degrees, with no one finding jobs and everyone having the same “let’s hide out in school” mentality as me. However, I’m not really sure what a masters degree is worth. Most jobs I’m looking at don’t require them and if a business wants you to have one they’ll usually pay for it, so it doesn’t make too much sense to go for one on your own. That is, unless you’re super passionate about a specific field. Oh, to have a passion….

After perusing through masters programs, one kept catching my eye: Library Sciences. It would keep me in academia without having to write a dissertation or actually become a professor. I’m good at being quiet. I can read. I wear glasses. As it turns out, these are not actually requirements to be a librarian (except literacy). According to the American Library Association, librarians should:

· Enjoy helping and serving others (I have never met a nice librarian so I believe this is more of a suggestion than a requirement)

· Interested in developing and providing services, resources and materials that inform and entertain, such as books, movies, music, storytelling, websites, local history, databases, and puppets (PUPPETS???? I’m picturing a puppeteer class in library science school)

· Believe strongly in First Amendment rights protecting the freedom of speech and of the press (Well, I’ve never not believed in this)

· Wish to contribute to the greater good of a literate society (as long as I don’t have to teach people to read)

· Believe all information resources provided by libraries should
be equitably accessible to all library users (Books for everyone!)

After reading more about becoming a librarian, it turns out you don’t always need a library science degree, which kind of defeats the point of becoming a librarian at all. That also brings to light that I might not actually want to be a librarian—I just want to go back to school.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job outlook for librarians in the next decade looks good, since most librarians are old and probably retiring (though I just assumed they all died on the job since all librarians seem to be ancient). The median salary is about $53,000, but a lot higher if you work for the Federal Government

I think I could enjoy being a librarian. I could get a lot of reading done and rock the pencil-absentmindedly-stuck-in-my-hair look, but I’m not sure if it’s really what I’m supposed to do. If I did become a librarian, I would be sure to implement a “reading to dogs” program. This has been started at other libraries, and it involves dogs being told to sit and stay (and probably sedated) while little kids read to them. The point is that children who aren’t confident with their reading skills can get good practice reading out loud to dogs, since dogs won’t interrupt them or make fun of them. But I have a hunch that this is one big librarian prank so they can get a good laugh watching a first grader read to a golden retriever. Or maybe I’m just a sick, soulless person, in which case, library sciences is not for me.

Genetic Counselor

In high school biology, I always thought the subject of genetics was fascinating, and that’s not just because class project where we had to make a double helix out of gumdrops. Genetic counseling might seem like a totally off-the-wall career option, especially considering I didn’t take one science class in college, but in the spirit of getting back to the basics of what I enjoy (or what I’ve enjoyed in the past), it’s something I think I should explore.

According to genetichealth.com, a genetic counselor helps people understand their risk for genetic conditions (such as cystic fibrosis or cancer), educated people about these diseases, and assesses the risk of passing those diseases on to children. Now, it’s not too clear to me how a genetic counselor does this, but I’m assuming it goes beyond those cutesy little allele charts we made in high school.

Nope, that’s basically what they do, as you can see from this little example of a genetic counseling session, provided by the website.



Does that say rectal bleeding?? I would have to investigate a whole family’s history of rectal bleeding??? Maybe this isn’t the job for me. I can’t even talk about feet without getting grossed out.

But then again, genetic counseling does seem like the cushy side of the medical profession. No surgery. No open wounds. No staring into people’s mouths or looking at their urine. I just have to talk about rectal bleeding and Downs syndrome. I can manage that, especially for an average salary of $55,000 annually (after working in broadcast news, I’m easily impressed).

Becoming a genetic counselor might be a little difficult, since I haven’t taken a science class since I was 18. I would need a masters degree, and I would probably have to take a few undergraduate courses to make up for the lack of science in my past. But, I don’t mind being in school. It delays having to job hunt, which shouldn’t be too hard as a genetic counselor since it’s a growing field.

Now that I know what they do, do I really have what it takes to become a genetic counselor? According to medhunters.com, a genetic counselor should be:
• Calm and able to put people at ease: I’ve always thought I had a soothing voice
• Empathetic and sympathetic: I can fake that.
• Enjoy working with people: Umm….
• Able to impart complex information: Memories of unsuccessfully trying to teach my mother how to use the computer are flooding back to me.
• Non-judgmental and able to keep your opinions to yourself: Well, there goes that option
• Must be pro-choice: They’ll take one look at my Notre Dame education, assume I was one of the crazies who welcomed the president with blood-stained babies, and throw my resume away. Not to mention, I am Catholic, and I have no money for indulgences.

Well, it doesn’t look like I’m meant to be a genetic counselor. The healthcare industry is where it’s at as far as job growth, but maybe I should take a more communications approach to it. At least now I won’t have to talk to some stranger about their colon.

Public Relations

“PR? Bunch of champagne charlies and slosne rangers harassing journalists and going out for long boozy lunches? That’s an easy job!” - The Blog Herald


Ah, public relations—the journalist’s retirement plan. According to a recent “U.S. News & World Report” article, “It's not uncommon for journalists who have become frustrated by the sour state of their industry to seek refuge in this generally more lucrative career path.” I saw plenty of evidence of this in the newsroom I worked in. From day 1 on the job, I heard talk of people switching to PR for a more stable schedule and better pay.

I majored in marketing, but still have no idea what exactly marketers or public relations specialists do. According to Wikipedia (the ever-reliable information source) PR is “a field concerned with maintaining public image for businesses, non-profit organizations or high-profile people, such as celebrities and politicians.” So basically, it’s making people look good. Perhaps I would be good at this. I can put a positive spin on things. “I realize the sludge Company X is dumping into the river appears to be toxic, but I can assure you that all reports of three-eyed fish and two-headed are merely rumors.” Hmm, maybe I need to work on that.

I’m still unsure what a day in the life of a PR specialist would be like, but after searching the internet, I have a vague idea. It seems like a lot of email checking, phone chatting, schmoosing, networking, working lunches, and power words like synergy. While I have the required ability to juggle different tasks and lots of information, I don’t have the suggested extroverted personality or verbal communication skills. Sure, I can write, but going through a conversation without saying “um” is virtually impossible for me.

Education requirement: bachelors (check!)
Average salary: $50,000
Average workweek: 50-60 hours
Average stress level: high.

The pros: good salary, excuse to wear a suit, lots of chances for upward mobility, good projected growth over the next decade

Tbe cons: usually have to start with an internship, staring at a computer all day, networking (I despise that word), have to wear uncomfortable business clothes, probably an office full of the people I went to business school with (there’s a reason I only stayed in touch with the TV people).

It’s definitely something I’ll continue to look into, but the more I learn about the corporate business world, the less I want to be a part of it. Perhaps “The Office” has given me a bad perception of cubicle life, but I just get the feeling that any job description that uses words like “networking” and “action items”. I think a public relations job at a museum or non-profit would be better suited for me, rather than being one of thousands in a global PR megacorp. I can see it now, writing press releases about a zoo, sending it out to all the local news outlets. “The Zoo would like to extend our deepest regrets and sympathies to the family and friends of Timmy Smith. Safety is our highest priority, but the exact cause of the gorilla’s escape is still under investigation. The ape exhibit will be closed as police continue their inspection, but for the rest of the month the Zoo is offering free passes to our dolphin and killer whale show.”

I’ll be sure to file that one away in my writing samples.

Home Sweet Home...Again

At the end of Thomas Wolfe's novel You Can't Go Home Again, the protagonist, George Webber, realized, "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame.” Years later, Jon Bon Jovi responded in song with “It doesn't matter where you are/it doesn't matter where you go/If it's a million miles away/or just a mile up the road/Take it in, take it with you when you go/Who says you can't go home”. I think I’m somewhere in between that. After a year working in broadcast news, I have returned home, unemployed and once again searching for my life’s passion. I am surrounded by nostalgia—my bedroom is filled with memorabilia from my childhood and I find myself wondering what I want to be when I grow up. Yet, the wanderlust is still there—I have not returned for good. My first job out of college was not meant to be the end of my career search. I still have soul searching (and job hunting) to do, so for me, coming home means a chance to restart, reevaluate, and hopefully, reignite some of that childlike passion to pursue a dream.

Broadcast news is a great career, if that’s what you’re into. I had no intention of ever working in news—I never read the paper, never watched an evening newscast, and generally lived in ignorance of world happenings. I landed the production assistant job at a station in my college town through my college adviser. Having lived at home for 3 months after graduating with no hint of a job offer, I took the position and moved back to South Bend. In my year in the news business, I learned a lot about the industry and even more about the Michiana area. I quickly became bored with my minimum wage, part time gig, so I started helping out with producing newscasts. Eventually, I started producing evening shows on my own and was offered a promotion to a full-time producer. This is where I found myself at a crossroads. I could take the producer job, which was a 2-year contract with laughable pay and benefits, or I could take a risk and say “no” to all of it. I thought of my coworkers, all news junkies whose bedtime stories had been editorials and who had posters of Walter Cronkite and Diane Sawyer in their college dorm rooms. I thought of the day-to-day life as a news producer, staying in my college town as my friends graduated and left, working 12-hour days with no chance of a raise, fighting against layoffs and job consolidation in a struggling industry. I decided to turn down the contract, which might have actually been the less risky option. At least now, I won’t risk two years of my life in a career that would burn me out in one.

So just when my brother went off to college and my parents were settling into their empty next, I flew back to the roost. Moving home was difficult, of course. I really did enjoy my coworkers and it was tough to give up the independence of my apartment, but I am very fortunate to have such a supportive family who will welcome me back with minimal teasing. Now begins the arduous task of searching for jobs and applying to grad schools. Hours will be spent in front of my computer, only half that time on YouTube. The most difficult part of all of this is that I still don’t know what I want to do or where I want to live. I thought I wanted to live in D.C., but then I visited and discovered that, contrary to my naive perception, the city really is entirely based on politics. I have no interest in politics, and even though I spent a year working in news, I continue to get my information from the E! network. What I’m getting at is that I need to narrow down my search. Every day, I think of a new career that sounds interesting or even exciting, but by the next day, my capricious mind has moved onto something else. Therefore, this blog will serve as a sort of tool to help me refine my search. Each post will explore a different career option or location (and it might occasionally focus on my parents’ latest antics). Topics to look forward to include: public relations, sommelier, Minnesota, professor, Chicago, zoo keeper, and genetic counselor. Any other suggestions are entirely welcome and will be considered. Except sales. I refuse to do sales.

My Mother, the Tree Whisperer

I’m starting to notice, as others of you might be, that this blog’s focus is turning towards crazy things my parents do. Though that wasn’t the original intention of the blog, my parents weren’t originally this weird. I always thought your parents were supposed to seem weirdest to you in your teens, when they drive you nuts about boys and curfew and grades. I actually got along really well with my parents, and I still do. The difference is, I was living at home and too close to the situation to realize just how crazy they really are. Now that I’m living in another state, and my brother is the only one around to keep the parents sane, Mom and Dad have over-indulged in their idiosyncrasies, which I get to hear about over the phone, and you get to read about in my blog.

The crazy parent of the week award goes to Mom, for two specific instances.

The first occurred earlier in the week when I called home to have a nice chat with Mom. My little brother, Alex, answered the phone and actually had a conversation with me, which I found odd because he usually acts as if he doesn’t even have a firm grasp of the English language. Suspicious, I asked him why he hadn’t handed the phone off to Mom
“She told me to talk to you until she’s done with a manicure,” he grumbled.
“Oh, that’s nice,” and then I thought twice. “Wait, is she giving the manicure to herself or to the dog?”
“The dog, of course! She never takes care of herself anymore!”
“She’s actually giving the dog a manicure?” That’s when I heard Mom telling Henry the dog to just sit still and be a good boy so she could make his nails pretty, because he’s a pretty boy, yes he is!
“Yeah, stupid dog,” my brother said through clenched teeth, or at least it sounded like he said it through clenched teeth. That might just be how he talks, we’re not sure. “She’s been talking to the fish more, and yesterday she started talking to a tree.”
To give you a little background info, Alex won a goldfish at a school carnival. He named the fish Steve. Mom quickly changed it to “Baby Fish Mouth” and enjoys feeding it every morning while telling the fish how cute it is and asking it how it likes its breakfast. News of Mom talking to the fish was nothing new to me. The tree thing, however, was a bit shocking.
“What do you mean she was talking to a tree?”
“We had a big storm and it knocked this branch part of the way down, so I had to cut the whole branch off. The whole time, Mom just kept saying ‘It’ll be ok. I’m sorry, tree. I know that hurts. Everything will be ok.’”
“Wow, things are getting pretty bad over there. Why haven’t you been on top of this?”
“There’s nothing I can do,” my brother said, apparently after stuffing a handful of marbles into his mouth. “She’s just crazy.”
Finally, Mom finished giving Henry his mani-pedi, and she took the phone.
“How did Henry like his manicure?” I asked, even though I knew this would send her into a love sonnet about her puppy dog.
“Oh, he’s such a good boy! Aren’t you Henry? Yes you are! Henry, stop. Henry, put the ball down, it’s not play time. Stop biting me! Stop it! Down! Henry! Off!”
“Sounds like obedience school is really working”
“It is! I just have to remind him that I’m the pack leader.” Mom had recently enrolled Henry in dog obedience school that was run by a brutish Russian woman with a Doberman. My Dad was forced to go to “doggy school” and texted me from each class with another comment of just how brutish and just how Russian the instructor was.
“So why were you giving Henry a manicure?” I dared to ask.
“Well, you remember what happened last time I tried to clip his nails?” I did. Mom cut his nail too short and Henry bled for what seemed like days. What’s worse is that Mom came out of the bathroom covered in dog blood, and the bathroom looked like a doggy murder scene. “I got a new tool that shaves down Henry’s nails instead of clipping them.”
“Probably a good idea. Hey, I heard you were talking to a tree.” I felt like a psychiatrist checking in on a past patient.
“Yeah, I was talking to a tree,” Mom said in the same tone she might use if instead of “tree” she said “neighbor”. “Alex was cutting into its trunk and it was sad. I felt really bad for it.”
“Oh, that is said. Poor tree.” I’m probably just as bad for indulging in this, but I did feel a little sorry for the tree.
The rest of our conversation carried on as usual, swapping cat stories, talking about our favorite shows, and sharing the latest weird thing Dad did.

The other reason Mom has received the “crazy parent of the week award” is because of her Facebook experiences, or more accurately, upsets.

I made the mistake of introducing Mom to Facebook while I was in college. It started out innocently enough; she just wanted to see pictures of my old classmates that had been in her Girl Scout troop. Then she wanted to see if I could find her old classmates. Once she got tired of only looking at the thumbnail image of each person, she decided it was time to get her own Facebook account.
She figured most of it out by herself, which I have to give her credit for, but trying to explain the concept of a “wall” is really difficult if you haven’t been using it since your teens.
“Your wall is where people can write public messages to you, and you can do the same on their wall”
“Why would anyone do that” she asked, looking disgusted. “Why would you want your message to be so public? I don’t get it.”
“Well, I guess it’s just for little messages, like ‘hey, how ya doing?’ or ‘take a look at this website.’”
“Well, why not just put that in an email? It’s the same thing, then all your stuff is private.”
I have to admit, she had me stumped. I don’t really know why we use Facebook walls. I gave up on the wall explanation and moved on to filling out her personal information. That became a bit futile because she couldn’t decide what she wanted to put, so I left that for her to do on her own later. I neglected to explain the complicated things, like uploading photos or downloading applications, but again to her credit, she figured the photo thing out on her own and now our family’s European vacation is as public as those wall posts.
A few weeks after helping Mom set up her Facebook, I get a call from her, sounding very frustrated.
“Someone friended me, but I don’t want them to be my friend. Can they see my stuff?”
“No, you have to friend them to allow them to see your profile. Who friended you?”
“It’s my old high school friend’s daughter. Isn’t that weird?”
I agreed. That was really weird.
“So what do I do if I want them to go away?” Mom pressed on.
“Just don’t accept their friend request. Hit ‘ignore’”
“Ok, she’s gone,” she said, sounding relieved. “I just wanted to look at other people’s information and pictures. I didn’t know people would start bugging me!”
Mom found the problem we all eventually come across with Facebook: stalking others means you too will eventually be stalked.
Eventually, Mom got more acclimated with Facebook. After not going on for months, then logging in to realize she had been neglecting wall posts and messages (she felt very bad about all this), she started making it a point to go on to the site several times a week. In doing so, she found more old friends and started to make efforts to reconnect with them. However, the results were not what she had hoped for.
“You won’t believe what happened to me on Facebook today!” she said in a recent phone conversation.
“What happened?”
“Well, I found this old friend of mine and I friended her and she friended me back right away.”
“Well that’s nice…”
“Just hold on,” she cut me off. “I sent her a message, asking her how she’s been the past however many years its been since we’ve talked, and she never replied! That bitch never wrote back, and I wrote the nicest things to her and I was such a good friend to her back when she lived here!”
“Maybe she just doesn’t log onto Facebook that much. You’ve been known to do stuff like that.”
“No, I know she’s on Facebook, because I’ve checked her wall and there’s stuff all over it from the past couple of days!” It seemed Mom had mastered the fine art of Facebook stalking. “She’s always playing that stupid game, and pops up on my news feed for adopting sheep and pigs and shit.” It also seems Mom discovered the annoyance that is Farmville. “And you know what? She had big, blonde, over-teased hair in the 80s, and she still has the exact same hair!” And finally, the true purpose of Facebook—to judge.
“That is pretty rude of her not to respond. She sounds dumb.”
“She IS dumb. Facebook says it’s about “reconnecting”, so if you’re going to be on Facebook, reconnect, damn it!”
I feel like Classmates.com might have been a better social networking choice for Mom.

Mom might be a little crazy, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. What else would I have to write about?

I'll Have a "Beer"

So far I haven’t written about my boyfriend, though that’s because up until recently he didn’t do anything embarrassing, distasteful, or hilarious enough to put in this blog. About a week ago, he finally gave me some good blog material, quite possibly at the expense of my respect.

After a rather trying day at work, I text my boyfriend (for the purposes of this blog, let’s call him Red), and ask what he’s doing for dinner. He’s over at a mutual friend’s apartment, and he [jokingly] says they’re all going to dinner at Chuck E. Cheese and that I should join. Starving, and wondering where we were really going, I head over to join them.

I get there and Red is sitting in a chair, awkwardly hunched over. I don’t think anything of it, but after a few minutes of chit-chat, I noticed that what I thought were khaki shorts are something else. Red was wearing the one type of clothing I despise more than any other: camouflage. Immediately, I shout “Are you wearing CAMO?!” and he finally sits up to reveal the camo shorts in all their red neck glory. What this movement also reveals is an Indy 500 sweatshirt, which in his defense, really tied the whole “I’m from southern Indiana” look together. Perplexed by his wardrobe choice, I ask “Who are you hiding from?!” because in my mind, the only reason to wear camo is to blend in with your surroundings. He responds with “I didn’t think I was going to see you today,” so at least he tried to keep the appalling pants from me.

After getting over the shock of seeing my boyfriend dressed like a 13-year-old NASCAR fan, we head out for pizza and beer. What I thought was a joke was actually serious. We were going to Chuck E. Cheese. So after a hard day at work, I was going to blow off some steam with some toddlers and an animatronic rat, accompanied by my boyfriend in camo. Great.

I don’t recall ever going to Chuck E. Cheese as a child, but my mom assures me that I did. I must have blocked it, and I could see why. The robotic animals on stage were more frightening than cuddly, and the music was repetitive and annoying. The games looked boring, and the prizes were even worse. Since it was a Monday night, there were no birthday parties, but there were plenty of teen moms and their brats.

We ordered pizza, breadsticks and beer. We didn’t know what kind of beer, since we weren’t given any choices and they didn’t tell us. We simply ordered “beer”, which required the manager to come out and serve us all, since everyone else who works there is 16. It seemed unnecessary, though, since the “beer” appeared to be O’Doul’s.

So there I sat, in front of a singing rat with my nondescript beer and a slice of fairly gross pizza, next to my charmingly blend-able boyfriend. Never had I ever felt further from adulthood. The only good thing is that we laughed a lot, and Red will never wear those shorts again.

Conversations With My Parents About Celebrities

Mom: Have you seen “Celebrity Fit Club”?
Me: No….
Mom: Well, that Kevin Federline surprisingly seems like a really sweet guy.
Me: Huh?
Mom: I think the media has him pegged wrong. He’s just so laid back, so sweet, never starts fights, and just seems like a really nice guy.
Me: So you’re saying Kevin Federline is a good guy?
Mom: Yeah! He seems really great! Makes you wonder how he ended up with crazy Britney. I mean, she obviously didn’t go crazy because of him.
Me: Obviously…
Mom: I mean, Kevin Federline is probably the nicest person in Celebrity Fit Club. Now, Sebastian Bach is a jerk. He’s always starting fights with people and he’s downright mean.


Mom: I think John Mayer is a jerk.
Me: Oh, because of those things he said about Jessica Simpson?
Mom: Yeah! But especially because he badmouthed Jennifer Aniston. I love Jennifer Aniston. I’ll see anything she’s in. I can’t wait to see “Bounty Hunter.” But John Mayer is just a jerk. I mean, what kind of guy goes around saying that stuff? He’s not even attractive. He’s ugly!


Me: I had a dream that we were at the grocery store and Snoop Dogg was our check out person and you were telling him how much you loved his music.
Mom: I HATE Snoop Dogg! Why would I say I love him?
Me: I don’t know! Do you even know who Snoop Dogg is?
Mom: Yeah, isn’t he the ugly one with all the girlfriends?
Dad: No! Snoops a good guy! He has that show about his family!
Me: Yeah, you’re thinking about Flava Flav.
Dad: FLAVA FLAV!!!
Mom: Well then who is Snoop Dogg?
Me: He’s another rapper. Kind of has a long face, braids…
Mom: I still don’t know who that is, but I don’t think I would like him.
Dad: Snoop’s cool


Dad: Have you seen that “Pretty Wild” show? Those girls are crazy! They make the Kardashians look tame!
(One week later)
Dad: They had the first and second episodes of Pretty Wild one right after the other so I got to watch them both. Those girls are crazy! I figured, if Mom can watch “Biggest Loser”, I can watch stupid E! shows.