Anyway, while I could make this long, I really don’t want to. The job has good aspects, bad aspects, and ugly aspects, but that’s how life works. Hell, there are even some people who are good, bad, and ugly. I’ll indirectly mention them later in this post.
So without further ado, I bring you...
THE GOOD
• Overview
Without question, the job itself is great. Being a school librarian gives me a chance to present a new topic and new information almost every week with students. It doesn’t matter if the topic might be historical (e.g., the Titanic) or something related to research, such as discussing plagiarism with the sixth grade students.
With younger students, I’m hopefully able to get them interested in reading and learning in general. Not only can books be fun, but I’ve attempted to show them that the concept of “education” in general isn’t one that has to begin when they walk through the school’s front door and end when they leave. It’s something that they can—and should—do on a regular basis. I know, I know—this isn’t going to happen, but I’ll mention that in a bit.
• Environment
Taken as a whole, working in a school library isn’t bad at all. My assistant and I are basically in a bubble because we have little reason to leave the library throughout the day, but I say that in a positive way. While we don’t agree on everything, we’re able to work well with each other. Even though some people might think that being cut off from the rest of the faculty is a negative, I’ve learned to view it as a positive because I’m not subjected to any faculty gossip and I’m not a member of any faculty clique.
There’s obviously both pros and cons to this kind of insulation. For instance, if you need the support from someone on something, if you’re not in their clique, you might find yourself out in the cold. On the other hand, if someone doesn’t like something that you’ve said or done, if the clique in power at the moment doesn’t look favorably on the first clique, they’re more than likely going to ignore anything that’s been said. Thus, this insulation can work for you and against you.
• Students
Obviously there are kids whom you can’t stand and even kids whom you know are going to end up in prison by the time that they’re 21. At the same time, there are kids who make you take notice because you can see that they’re going to be accomplished writers, inventors, creators, and business owners. They’re going to make the world go around and you can see it very early. From the questions that they ask during the class lesson to the books that they check out after the lesson is over, these are the kids who are going to be—or rather, should be—our future leaders. I say “should” because sometimes the bad kids get positive attention from fellow students, but that’s coming up in my “Bad” section.
• Faculty
Overall, my fellow teachers have been a fairly reasonable lot with which to work. From what I’ve heard, this is most likely because of my aforementioned state of insulation. By essentially creating my own clique, I’ve cut myself off from the negativity that might otherwise come with being a regular classroom teacher. I’m able to get along with everyone from kindergarten to sixth grade, with minimal to no friction.
That doesn’t mean that they’re not talking about me behind my back, but I can’t stop that and to be frank, I don’t give a shit.
THE BAD
• Stereotypes
One of the things that has been tough to deal with, and even tougher to overcome, is that many people have ideas of who I am or what I like simply because I’m a librarian. Moreover, I’m a male librarian and that adds yet another component to the equation with which they can stereotype. I’ve had coworkers who were shocked to learn that I don’t like to eat junk food, shocked to learn that I don’t like Star Trek or science-fiction in general, shocked to learn that I don’t play World of Warcraft, and shocked to learn that I listen to music like Slayer and Type O Negative instead of Toby Keith, Taylor Swift, or Kelly Clarkson. (They probably wouldn’t be shocked to learn that I also like Morrissey, but given that most of my coworkers have never heard of Morrissey, the point is moot.)
This has created a few awkward moments, especially when I’ve had coworkers try to fix me up with other coworkers who were “right” for me, except for the fact that my likes and dislikes weren’t the same likes and dislikes that the former coworkers had assigned to me in their own minds, making me “right” for the latter coworker.
• Coworkers
Before you think that this is a misprint, I’m listing my coworkers in both the good and bad. This is because some of my coworkers have taken some time for me to get used to them, as their mindset is what I refer to as “typically American.”
Until this point in my life, for the most part I’ve been able to associate with people of my choosing. It didn’t matter if it had been people in a chat room or grad school or friends from around my hometown; I was able to interact with like-minded people. That ability isn’t there with this job, as many of the people are from different backgrounds and have interests that mean little to me. For instance, on days that my coworkers choose to debate American Idol contestants or who should be picked on The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, I have to sit and listen to the conversations with nothing to offer. If I do have anything to offer, it’s the usual, “I don’t know; I don’t watch it.” I then get odd looks.
And speaking of oddities, one thing that I’ve learned from many coworkers is that conformity is embraced. Being “normal” means doing what the crowd does, and doing what the crowd does is encouraged. Questions such as, “Why don’t you listen to country music?” or “Why don’t you watch NASCAR?” were commonplace earlier this year. Now the questions are more like, “How can you be comfortable knowing that you’re not like everyone else?” I don’t try to explain it because if they don’t know the answer to their own questions, they never will.
This is why my view on being an adult is this: As I get older, I continue to see that being an “adult” means being expected to preach the virtues of creativity, diverse viewpoints, and individuality to children while simultaneously preaching the virtues of conformity, uniformity, and collectivist thought to your peers. We basically feed kids a big, steaming pile of bullshit when we tell them to be themselves because once college is over, we tell each other to do what we do and we disguise it by calling it “unity.” It’s not unity; it’s narcissism and arrogance.
• Other Viewpoints
I’m sure that it’s the case in almost every job, but I’ve had to endure a few opinions from classroom teachers who have their own idea on how my library should run, no matter the topic. From book check-out procedures to inventory procedures, I’ve had my share of the you-should-do-it-my-way mentality. I would never attempt to tell them what to do in their room; I’m not sure what makes my library “okay” to critique.
• Being “Too” Smart
This is going to sound odd—and possibly even unbelievable—to people in different parts of the United States, but in my area, the locals have a rather depressing view of education and intelligence: you’re supposed to be smart enough to get the job done, but it’s “bad” to be too smart because being too smart makes you a nerd. You don’t want to be a nerd, so you shouldn’t be too smart.
THE UGLY
There are primarily two items to list here and I wasn’t sure which should be listed first. They’re both sad, so it shouldn’t be assumed that I’m making one “uglier” than the other.
• Parents
When I was a kid, if I did something wrong in school I had two things to fear: (1.) punishment from school, and (2.) punishment at home. My parents didn’t take any shit from me and if a teacher ever told them that I did something out of line, they didn’t cut me any slack. Before I continue, please keep in mind that this was roughly 20 years ago.
Let’s fast-forward to 2009 to when we meet the new breed of parents. This new breed isn’t interested in showing their kids right and wrong; they’re interested in being liked by their kids and being their kids’ friends. They don’t say, “Kid, you fucked up; you need to take the punishment”; they instead say, “That rule is unfair! Kids shouldn’t have rules!”
Just this year I had a student whose mother is raising him to believe that he’s always right, no matter what. She’s taught him that if he gets into a fight, it’s always the other kid’s fault because if the other kid hadn’t been there in the first place, the fight would have never occurred. When he’s older his mom will no doubt bail him out of jail after he’s arrested for bank robbery and Mom will say, “Honey, it’s not your fault. If the bank hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have been robbed. It’s their fault.”
I had another student whose mother thought that I should do away with due-dates on books because they’re “unfair” to students. She was also opposed to my informing her daughter that she had any overdue books. Such reminders, said Mom, would “upset her daughter” and “embarrass” her.
One other example, even though it has nothing to do with the library, is that of having bedtimes set for children. Two months ago I asked several classes for their bedtimes as the topic came up during a lesson. I was astounded to find that at least one-third of the students in each class, from grades three to six, had no bedtime whatsoever. They went to bed whenever they felt like it. In one class, almost half went to sleep between two and three o’clock in the morning on a regular basis. When I was younger I had a fixed bedtime until I was in high school. My parents weren’t doing it to be hard-asses; they did it because they knew that had they not done it that I’d be staying up until four in the morning reading, writing, or listening to music.
Many of my students’ parents have done away with bedtimes because their view is that bedtimes are—again—“unfair.” Kids shouldn’t have rules, they figure, because Mom and Dad didn’t like bedtime when they were kids, so now it’s time for them to change the rules.
But maybe that’s why we have some of these parents and their hands-off approach to parenting: they didn’t like rules as a kid, but they never really grew up to realize that some rules are necessary. They’re simply 40-year-old children who are trying to raise 11-year-old children. Their mentalities aren’t much different.
• Women
I wasn’t sure if I was going to include this because it has nothing to do with the job per se, but I decided to list it after all and list it as my last item.
I can’t sugar-coat this topic so I won’t. After this last year, my view of women in terms of relationships has become more negative than during any other time in my life. To be quite frank, after having seen and heard what I saw and heard over the last nine months, being single doesn’t bother me one bit.
Let me preface this by explaining that ninety-five percent of my coworkers are female. When you work with people on a daily basis, five days a week, after a while people become comfortable with each other and they let their guard down. They open up and their honesty begins to come forth. This honesty can be both good and bad. In this case, for me, it was both bad and good because while it made me see and hear things that I didn’t want to see or hear, it validated things that I’ve often wondered about. In other words, it’s information that was important to hear and see.
First, I’ve learned that men are viewed as nothing more than paychecks with penises attached. Every conversation that I listened to about men—as told by my female coworkers—always came back to money. How much money could they get? How much money did they get? How can they get more money from their man? In one instance I had a coworker who wanted to fix me up with her niece, but my coworker’s sister-in-law (the niece’s mom) had some concerns before I even met her daughter: (1.) “What does Chase look like?” and (2.) “How much money does Chase make?”
I wish that I were making these questions up, but the mother in question wanted to make sure that her daughter had a boyfriend who was hot and rich. He had to be hot because her daughter deserves hotness; he had to be rich because her daughter likes to go shopping and she shouldn’t have to spend her own money.
Even my coworker’s own daughter was stringing her own boyfriend along to get jewelry out of him. I felt sorry for the poor guy because the girl was telling everyone that she even had a date picked out when she was going to dump the guy in favor of another guy with more money.
A second coworker told me about her wedding day, in which she and her husband were both engaged to other people. They had a hell of a time keeping their affairs hush-hush as to not tip off their other fiancé/fiancée. The wedding was on a Saturday and the following Monday the husband called the other fiancée to say, “Honey, there’s something you need to know. I just got married on Saturday.” Very classy.
But this brings me to what seems to be a big theme in all the stories that I heard this year from women about men: lying is important in a relationship and relationships are basically games that you’re supposed to “play.” Relationships aren’t things that people do; they’re not things that people let happen throughout the course of their daily lives. Relationships are simply interactions whereby people follow an expected pattern: one person does or says one thing, the other person responds with a countering action or comment. This cycle continues because it’s how the relationship is “played.” It’s what is “supposed to” happen.
This stuff might be irrelevant in a few years anyway, because a recent NPR story highlights the increase in twenty-somethings just hooking-up for sex and skipping the whole relationship thing. Even dating is becoming passé. One woman in the story said, “Going out on a date is a sort of ironic, obsolete type of thing. Going out on a date to dinner and a movie? It’s so cliché; isn’t that funny?”
As an aside I thought that this was kind of ironic itself because it legitimizes the idea of men simply viewing women as nothing more than sex objects. We no longer have to be interested in who a woman is. We can just view her as a nothing more than a vagina, pair of tits, and an ass. Women’s liberation indeed.
CONCLUSION
Overall, it’s been educational. I’ve learned what to do, what not to do, and I’ve been given insight into matters that I was ignorant to in years past.
Will I be doing this for 30 years? That’s something that I won’t know until 30 years from now.
Ω
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