An email from a friend reminded me that I’d been Facebook status-ing (we need to come up with a verb for that) about job changes but never quite explained what was up.

So here’s what’s up:
Due to the budget cuts required by the city, the branch library hours changed pretty dramatically. In order to staff the new hours, there was some restructuring, or “management initiated transfers.”

My transfer was not to another neighborhood branch, but to the Central branch downtown. I’m going to be working in General Reference Services, on the 5th floor (the Mixing Chamber). It looks like I’ll spend a lot of my off-desk time online answering questions via QuestionPoint, txt, and chat reference. It’s going to be a big change, switching to 100% reference work.

When I first found out I was pretty upset – I’ve worked with the same coworkers and community of patrons for 3 years, and I’m very attached. In this new position I won’t be doing any outreach, programming, or work with teens and schools. I also won’t get the same interactions with patrons – no more reader’s advisory (unless I’m filling in on the Fiction Desk), no Rules of Conduct violation discussions (oh wait, I won’t miss those).

All in all, it’s been a big upheaval for myself and those I work with, but change isn’t always terrible and I’m staying positive.

Based on the Book is Mid-Continent Public Library’s awesome database of over 1,200 books that have been adapted into movies. You can search by movie title or release year as well as author. Awesome! Use it here: http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us/readers/movies/.

If I’m hollering, let me go!

So. I’m still 1/2 in the dark as to what comes after this English degree. the time has come to make a decision. Of course this means I ask a lot of strangers and friends to tell me what I should do.

Not really tell me what to do, tell me what you think i’d be better at. I already have ideas on which one I want to do. But as I said, I keep going back and forth.

So here, some pros and cons. I’m expecting a boatload of comments here, people.

(in alphabetical order)

Librarian

pros – 1 year of grad school, saucy wardrobe, organizing things, old books, can be social/antisocial depending, researching!

cons – could get dull very fast (stamp. stamp. stamp.) and i’ve never worked in a library, what if i hate it? also, you don’t reorganize a library every week, which is a shame because that’s the part i like

Teacher

pros – 1 year of grad school, i had bad teachers in my poor state’s public school system – it would be neat to be a good teacher, i think i could make English fun, i enjoyed my education/student teaching classes in college, they will always need teachers (some level of job security, same goes for librarians though)

cons – i would need balls of steel, a lot of public speaking (though i hear you get used to it really quickly), i hate when students don’t respect their teachers – how would it feel to BE the teacher?

So there. Would you rather walk into a library and have me help you find a book/answer a question? Or would you rather have me teach you new and exciting ways to conjugate?