Career advice - pick one?

[Sampiro]

@nashiitashii

I’m going down this route via the University of South Florida (distance program there’s a little different than the traditional “online university” route), and should be able to have a reasonably good chance of getting a job right out of college. (I’m not counting on it, and thus am trying to get my foot in the door while I’m still a student.)

[HIJACK]You’ll probably have a decent chance as long as you’re geographically flexible, and this really is a graying profession; every job I’ve had was about 1/2 people over 50. Word of advice though, particularly if you’re going into academic libraries but even if you’re not: START APPLYING FOR JOBS DURING LAST QUARTER/SEMESTER. It’s not at all uncommon for academic/municipal/school hiring decisions to take months from the time they’re posted til the time they go through the bureaucracy and actually hire somebody. Applying asap will save you having to do temp work or shift work for 3 months after school.

You’ll also notice there’s MAJOR discrepancies in how much different places pay for the same job even with cost-of-living taken into account. (In Georgia for example I knew people right off the boat from grad school who made $8000 more as a public librarian in Neverheardofit towns [Americus, Moultrie, etc.] than they’d have made in Atlanta [which funds its libraries differently], and I make as much (actually more in real salary) working for a McCollege in Alabama than I made at a major research university and at that I make less than a friend who’s at a Jr. College in West Neverheardofit, Alabama.

Another thing: unless you just really love researching and writing articles nobody gives a damn about except for other people researching and writing articles nobody gives a damn about, avoid research universities. It’s just way too much pressure and competition for no more money (kinda like taking Honor’s English where you do twice or three times the work for exactly the same credit hours and grade and nobody will ever really give a damn [even if you go for an English MA- they’re going to look at your upper levels and recs, not your Freshman comps- sorry, off on a tangent). The only real advantage to research universities is there are more challenging questions up occasion and they pay for a lot more travel/conferences, but generally the people are pricks.

Personally I much prefer smaller colleges. There’s a lot less bureaucracy, a lot fewer real a-holes, a lot more freedom, and the money’s the same or better.

Above all else, AVOID GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY IN ATLANTA LIKE THE PLAGUE. I’ve heard constant horror stories, and if you’ll look at the library job sites (lisjobs.com, etc.) you’ll notice they have constant turnover. There are others that have majorly bad reps as well (Auburn U. for example, where they do such things as hire an intern each year for a very good salary but don’t bother to mention in the ad that it’s for non-whites only {I don’t have such a problem with the non-white part- it’s funded by a particular grant- I just wish they’d be up-front about it to save students the price of quality CV paper} and where they are so paint-by-the-numbers and downright rude I considered walking out of a job interview {the woman who would have been my boss berated and criticized another employee who was present in front of me— Sampi don’t play that}). Another great advantage of smaller college/public libraries: you learn a lot more of the field (if you haven’t heard already, 80% of librarianship is OTJT).
Take every course you can in web page design, btw. Except UNIX [unless required] as they’re probably not going to let you use it anyway, and really web editors work better for what you’ll be designing.
Sorry for the interruption. We now return you to your regularly scheduled OP.

Oh, and whatever you’re using in distance ed- WebCT or CourseCompass or whatever- be sure to mention it on your vita. That’s a really major part of librarianship at some campuses, as is virtual reference.[/HIJACK]

[JohnT]

Caveat: I know nothing about you other than what I’ve read in this thread. So if I make assumptions that are WAY off base, my complete and sincere apologies.

Since you’re asking for career advice, give it some long term thinking. As a matter of fact, you would be better served by looking at this question backwards: Assuming health for you and your wife, what sort of life do you want to be living at the age of 70? Do you want to be renowned in your field, or do you want to retire quietly? Do you want a couple of houses, one in the mountains/beach the other in the “big city”, or do you expect to die in the same house you bore and raised your children in? Does your wife want a large family with many grandchildren or does she want to put career first, putting off child-rearing until your thirties, even forties? What about retirement: stay in the same place, move to Florida/Arizona/wherever, buy a RV and tool around the continent for a year or three?

Just close your eyes and imagine it… and then look at your choices again with this new perspective. Look backward from the age of 70 and see if being a mailman will get you this life. Or a librarian. Or whatever.

Now… as to what to do, something that is not on your list (you did mention “options”. )

Do you write? If so, many companies (especially small-to-medium companies undergoing growing pains) would appreciate your services in documenting processes and procedures… essentially, writing manuals and corporate policies. While you’re there, you can look around and see how to better organize their paper flow (one thing computers haven’t diminished is the flood of paper… increased it, actually). There are plenty of books that will tell you the proper idioms and layouts in writing stuff like this even if you’re not experienced in “business”.

This you could do freelance until a company likes you well enough to take you on payroll. You’d actually have to go out and pitch it, perhaps put a packet together with a few samples, but that should be no big deal.

Teaching. Instead of teaching kids, you could do corporate training, seminars, webinars, stuff like that. I view demonstrations, web demos, etc quite often in my job and many of them tend to be narrated by younger people.

I happen to note that Athens, OH is 74 miles from downtown Columbus, 162 miles from downtown Cincy, and 88 miles from Charleston, WV. I don’t know how stuck you are on living in Athens proper, but you’re close enough to a number of large cities (with their attendent employment choices) so that you can still be close to your family. For example, you could live halfway to Columbus and still be able to commute both ways.

My $.02.

[Sampiro]

One other thing I meant to mention: there are some programs that will allow you to simultaneously take graduate Ed. courses (if you’re going to stay in education a M.Ed. is pretty much what a BS-Ed was less than a generation ago) AND Information Studies with emphasis on school media. While this takes longer obviously than a M.Ed. or a MLIS individually it does not take as long as doing them both separately as some of the credits can pull double duty (so 2.5-3 years probably) and you emerge with 2 masters degrees, both employable. Also, both education and librarianship work best with two masters degrees as far as promotions/entry/tenure/salary/etc…

[brendon_small]

@JohnT

I happen to note that Athens, OH is 74 miles from downtown Columbus, 162 miles from downtown Cincy, and 88 miles from Charleston, WV. I don’t know how stuck you are on living in Athens proper, but you’re close enough to a number of large cities (with their attendent employment choices) so that you can still be close to your family. For example, you could live halfway to Columbus and still be able to commute both ways.

Athens or Chillicothe is kind of our “starting point” - our family lives right in between the two and we do want to be close to them, but they are 30 minutes either way. Other towns (Circleville and such) are close enough to Columbus as well - I could deal with that. Right now we are closer to Cincy or Columbus than Charleston, but that will change when I graduate with this degree.

I guess I’ve been going at this wrong - and your idea about thinking about where to end is a good one. I’ve pretty much been looking for something with some permanence, decent pay, and doesn’t require cooking fries…hah. I have started at a hotel (I used to work at one, now I’m at another) and I am looking very seriously at Athens because my boss/the owner are opening a hotel in Athens early next year. They have discussed training me to be the GM there, since they self-train GM’s on a regular basis. Kind of appeals to me.

Brendon Small