This is a post, first and foremost, about burnout. Being a public librarian presents a certain category of problems and attracts a certain type of people - namely, the problems of social aid professions and the compassionate people who go into them. The advice in this post comes from my own experiences as well as wisdom distilled from my parents’ combined 60 years of being in the sister passion profession of teaching.
Here goes:
1) Libraries are not your life. Not your patrons, not your programs, not your advocacy efforts. None of it. Repeat this to yourself, over and over, as many times as it takes. If you want to survive - or even just be effective - in this line of work, you cannot reduce your identity down to just ‘librarian’. All the advice on work-life balance and establishing boundaries applies here, but don’t forget to think about the ‘identity’ part specifically, too.
1a) It’s going to be really easy to forget 1) when you’re in the warm, righteous, determined rush of feeling needed.
That’s a heady feeling and it’s going to make you want to ignore your boundaries. Sometimes, you will; that can’t always be helped, and breaking your own boundaries isn’t something to beat yourself up over when it happens. It’s a neutral fact that we’re wired to love the feeling of being needed, or we wouldn’t have lasted this long as a social species. When you come down from it a bit, ask yourself what parts of that experience were rewarding to you. Was it the type of social interaction - teaching, caring, giving? Was it a feeling that you had power over your portion of the situation, power to enact what you thought was right? Where else could you get those things if you needed, so that your job doesn’t have to be the only place you experience those feelings?
2) Most people are not going to remember you after they walk out that library door, so don’t do your job to be remembered by them. You’re probably in this job because someone in libraries had a huge impact on you when you were younger, but you need to recognize when and where you’re making your interactions about you and your own self-image rather than your patrons or your role in the community. This can be especially difficult with kids, since kids can be very intense and make you feel like you’re the centre of their universe. When this happens, ask yourself what need you are fulfilling for them and what that actually, concretely requires of you.
3) Suffering is not transactional. We live in a culture that’s built primarily on Christian values, and the biggest Christian story of them all is the success of sacrifice. Jesus, however, was special - that’s kind of the whole point, as I understand the thing. Basically, remember that the amount of blood, sweat, and tears that you put into something does not in any way correlate to the amount of enjoyment or learning or purpose anyone else gets out of it.
4) Understand the system. Where does the money come from? Can you trace it back, not just to grants from the city, but to the kinds of business and property taxes that fund the city? North Americans are brought up with this background noise of ‘infinite growth’ that you have to consciously tone down if you want to be able to assess a situation realistically. I had a boss once who told me, “When you’re presenting to council, always remember that the fire department is fighting for the same pot of money you are.” There might be more than enough money in the world to fund what you want - but is that money in your town? If not, can you bring it into your town? Knowing what your limits are can help you expand them, yes, but it can also save you from throwing yourself after a mirage of glory that simply doesn’t exist.
5) Everything takes more time than you think, even changes away from horrifying practises or towards things that are objectively morally right. Libraries exist suspended in a web of the relationships between multiple bureaucratic organizations, budgets only happen once a year, and most people don’t spend their working days thinking about their community’s library. You’re going to have great ideas for change, they’re going to be realistic and possible and just within reach, and it’s going to feel grindingly slow. Don’t get mad; remember the fire department. Everyone working with you to achieve this change has their own equivalent of the fire department in their life. Make sure things are moving, but make sure you don’t blame people when they’re not moving faster. It’s unlikely that you’re being obstructed out of maliciousness and even on the rare occasions you are, you will get more help from others if you don’t visibly assume it anyway. Make sure you’re using your anger against injustice to motivate you, not other people.
every day i send emails with screenshots and attachments and highlighting on important bits and full paragraphs explaining what happened and why it’s a problem and how i would recommend fixing it and every day people far above my pay grade ask the stupidest questions you can imagine that clearly convey that they barely skimmed the email
This is a post, first and foremost, about burnout. Being a public librarian presents a certain category of problems and attracts a certain type of people - namely, the problems of social aid professions and the compassionate people who go into them. The advice in this post comes from my own experiences as well as wisdom distilled from my parents’ combined 60 years of being in the sister passion profession of teaching.
Here goes:
1) Libraries are not your life. Not your patrons, not your programs, not your advocacy efforts. None of it. Repeat this to yourself, over and over, as many times as it takes. If you want to survive - or even just be effective - in this line of work, you cannot reduce your identity down to just ‘librarian’. All the advice on work-life balance and establishing boundaries applies here, but don’t forget to think about the ‘identity’ part specifically, too.
1a) It’s going to be really easy to forget 1) when you’re in the warm, righteous, determined rush of feeling needed.
Like. Look. Listen. I have taught introductory quantum physics at a university level, and I need you all to incorporate this into your trans advocacy: There are situations where you need to make a decision to prioritize being comprehensible to your target audience above being The Most Unassailably Correct.
Teaching a toddler to wash hands because yucky when the Ethics Understander crashes through the roof. "STOP RIGHT THERE," the Ethics Understander shouts at me. "The disgust response is not a legitimate substitute for a considered value judgment, and in fact, weaponizing disgust instead of grounding those judgments in a more rigorous framework is fundamental to reactionary rhetoric!"
The toddler looks at me. "You are a fascist, auntie. I have seen the light and will now go eat chewing gum from the pavement, unless you can educate me on a rigorous framework on the microbiology of pavement chewing gum this very instant."
But I’m not a toddler, and I would never want someone to tell me the “for toddlers” version of their beliefs. If I found out they weren’t telling me their actual beliefs, I’d get mad and stop trusting them. So I don’t want to treat other adults like they’re toddlers.
This is something I had to struggle with a lot in my job. I know at least a few of my colleagues have had similar journeys, so I'm going to put mine here as an example.
I spend a lot of time explaining things like technology and legislation as someone with a Master's degree speaking to farmwives. One of my personal sparks-to-tinder rage triggers is being condescended to, and so I at first spent a lot of energy not adapting my communication much at all because I feared making everyone hate me.
Finally, a coworker I really looked up to, an absolutely brilliant high-powered former kindergarten teacher, took me aside and told me, as one teacher to another, that I needed to slow down. It helped a lot that she'd vented to me before about resenting becoming the "little old lady" everyone talked down to as soon as she walked into a phone store; she wouldn't be telling me this if I were in danger of condescending. It felt a little like permission. She was insanely good at her job.
Over the next 5 years, I gradually figured out that I could turn what felt like condescension into a much more natural-feeling curiosity towards other people's mental models and skill sets. In fearing condescension, I'd taken things too far in the other direction and started assuming everyone had my background knowledge... But both of those problems have the same root cause, which is skipping the step of taking the time to figure out where someone is at before you launch into explanation.
I developed scripts for it, as I got better, and it's certainly easier to develop those scripts as a response to someone asking you for an explanation, rather than trying to change someone's beliefs on the fly. But leading with genuine and genuinely curious questions, I find, rarely leads me astray. What does this person already know? What's the story they tell about it, if asked to explain it themself? What do they find practical and applicable about this information - what parts of this subject do they think they'll use?
I'm going to be working on these skills my whole life; to teach well, you have to decenter yourself, and for me that kind of progress comes in fits and starts. But this is what's worked for me to get a start on it!
DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THOSE BOOKS ARE PUSSYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOOK AT THOSE BOOKS BEING PUSSY;S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOW THATS WHAT I CALL “INTELLECTUALLY STIMULATING”…!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS WILL… REALLY MAKE YOU THINK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm not gonna articulate this well, but there's this phenomenon I keep seeing on the left that I'll call "bean soup rhetoric," wherein someone fails to understand that they are not the target audience for a particular message, or just can't conceptualize why a speaker would craft their message differently to resonate with a target audience that doesn't already completely agree with them.
"The 'God Made Trans People' billboard is stupid! God didn't make me! I'm an atheist!" Okay. The billboard sits along a major highway in Kansas. We can deduce that the target audience is not you—it's the centrist evangelical Christians driving along that road who could probably be persuaded to become allies as long as we choose our words carefully and don't make them feel attacked for not already knowing everything about trans rights issues. Another one I see a lot is, "We shouldn't be talking about how right-wing legislation catches [privileged in-group] in the crossfire when [marginalized out-group] suffers far more!" I know. I agree with you. Which is why you and I are not the intended audience of this argument!
The entire point of rhetoric is to win over someone who doesn't already fully agree with you. In this case, let's say that someone is Jennifer, the moderate center-right mom in your neighborhood who doesn't really know or care about transgender issues but would be absolutely horrified by the idea of her teenage daughter having to submit to an invasive inspection of her body just to be allowed to play soccer. Tell her, "Banning trans students from sports will inevitably subject all student athletes to invasive gender-policing," or "Legal restrictions on gender-affirming care will make it harder for you to access the hormone replacement therapy you take to treat menopause symptoms," and she is more likely to question her existing beliefs and listen to the rest of what you have to say than if you lead with leftist talking points that she already has a calcified opinion about or which she thinks do not personally affect her.
Tailoring the argument to the things she already cares about does not mean we're forgetting that she has more privilege than most—entirely the opposite, in fact. A privileged ally can be extremely valuable. Jennifer votes in every election. And so do all the other ladies at her book club, and church, and in the PTA, and those folks listen to Jennifer. There's a reason both parties were courting suburban women so hard in the last election cycle! If we can find common ground with her on this, if we can get her calling her representatives and talking to her friends and phone-banking and door-knocking and making a stink, that's how the needle starts to move. If I can convince her to take her support away from the candidates who are actively restricting my rights and throw it toward those who want to restore and expand those rights...then I'm sorry, but Jennifer is a more valuable ally to me than the people who agree that the legal boundaries of gender ought to be abolished altogether but refuse to actually do anything except complain online about how both sides are equally bad because the right is trying to force everyone to drink the cyanide kool-aid while the left keeps serving bean soup and they don't like bean soup
“It sucks that I understand Time Cube and as such cannot avoid becoming a genocidal dictator,” young Paul Atreides said to himself. “For me. Moral complexity is such a burden.”
CHAPTER 2
“Heard any good slurs for poor people lately?” asked the Baron Harkonnen homosexually, knocking back another shot of orphan tears.
“The fact that I will commit unspeakable genocide and lead a holy war across the galaxy is very bad,” said young Paul Atreides. “For me.”
“I too feel morally conflicted by my role in a ruthless eugenics program,” admitted his mother, the Lady Jessica. “Does that make me a bad mother? Who can say….”
At that moment the Duke Leto Atreides returned home from a grueling day churning out propaganda to convince his troops that he was worth dying for. His regal face was lined with deep moral complexities. “It’s tough when you’re me and everybody wants to fuck you so so bad,” he said. “But that’s the price I must pay for the future well-being of my ancestral house.” He sighed, deep and melancholy. When was the last time he’d thrown around the old pigskin with his boy? Would he ever get the chance again…?
That’s fully-manual ascetic space feudalism for you, he thought libertarianally.
Paul looked around the room and was struck by the sudden and horrific realization that he was the smartest person to ever live, and that even his own loving mother and father could never hope to understand Time Cube.
But that’s a problem for another day, Paul decided, not for the last time.
CHAPTER 2
“It’s a beautiful day to be grossnasty, don’t you think?” said the Baron Harkonnen homosexually as he surveyed the ravaged landscape beyond the window. Acid rain pelted against the glass and melted the flesh off the shrieking peasants below.
“Sure. Whatever,” said Feyd-Rautha, not looking up from his sketchbook, upon which he had scrawled the words ‘I love killing and maiming’ in large bubble letters.
“A-h-h,” said the Baron. “That was a trick question: every day is a beautiful day for being grossnasty. You must learn this lesson well, nephew, if you ever hope to get anywhere in life. Piter, what are you doing over there with that huge and evil brain of yours?”
The mentat violated the Hays Code six times in the few seconds it took him to reply. “I’m calculating a mathematically perfect slur for orphans,” he said in a gay voice. “Just as you requested.”
“Finally! A productive use of your time,” said the Baron, and flipped him off. Without a word, he snatched the pen from Feyd-Rautha’s hand and wrote ‘and oppressing the populace’ beneath the words the youth had already written. “There,” he said. “Much better.”
I can never read anything about Dune without recalling the management course in my library science degree where we had to come up with a reorganization plan to save the Arrakis County Public Library and I got to fire Baron Harkonnen from Head of Technical Services.
Abhorsen's House has a library and a "catalogue of the library of the Abhorsens saving those too secret to mention and sundry other excluded for important reasons". You know Lirael 'got a library job at 14 and immediately made herself a skeleton key so she could get into all the cursed and evil rooms' Goldenhand is not going to abide by that. She's going to throw her Abhorsen-in-Waiting weight around and order the library sendings to compile 'the NEW catalog of all our books including those too secret to mention and sundry others excluded for important reasons Except For Me'
I am going to need to sit down in a dark, quiet room and spend some time doing focused thinking so I can invent a new crime to do to you. I cannot BELIEVE I had to read that with my own two eyes.
Hey Mack, I'm about to start writing my undergraduate thesis and I've never quite written something like this before, especially at this length. Any tips?
Hi, first of all good luck with your thesis! My undergraduate thesis actually wasn't very good but I learned a lot from it!
Talk to your advisor. Seriously. The realization that my advisor is there for a reason got me through my master's thesis after trying to struggle through the undergraduate thesis with no support. Make regular in-person or online appointments with your advisor and get their feedback on at least one draft and more drafts if possible. Ask them for resources, advice, and troubleshoot your arguments. You're supposed to hand in an original work of scholarship, but you're allowed to get help. If your advisor is unhelpful, another trusted professor in your field also works.
Figure out the writing rhythm and strategy that works for you and ignore people telling you that there's a right way to write. A lot of people write the introduction last but if that doesn't work for you then why follow that advice? If you're at the thesis writing stage you probably have some ideas of how you prefer to work but it's not late enough to try different things.
Here's my advice but you don't need to follow what doesn't work for you:
Write an outline. This can be bullet points. It can be as stupid as writing "Here is where I explain what I do and why" and then elaborating on it as soon as you know what you're doing and why. I like to keep it open in a different tab while writing my first draft. I also sometimes write down mind maps in physical notebooks if I'm stuck. It really helps me stay organized when working on longer projects with multiple chapters and complex arguments and methodologies.
Do your sources and bibliography as you go along - as best as possible. It's a pain in the ass to format and it can take you out of your rhythm but with a thesis-length paper it's even worse to have to do everything in the end. When I don't want to lose my train of thought I just add as much as I can and add a symbol like * to indicate missing information (which you can then search in your document and fix).
Keep a physical notebook or word doc just with your thoughts, ideas, structure, quotes you want to use, quotes you're not sure you need.
This one is a bit weird and time consuming and doesn't work for everyone but it really works for me: write an entire first draft, no matter how rough, sleep over it one night, open a second tab with a new, fresh document, and re-write everything with the first draft in a parallel tab. When I edit an already written draft I tend to get lazy, miss errors etc. by forcing myself to rewrite everything I am far more likely to fix typos but also problems with my structure, argument etc.
Most importantly: Don't despair. You can do this. It's a long essay but it's just an essay. You've written essays before. Take a bit more time, plan a bit more, be a bit more careful, but simply try your best to write a good essay.
"If I may add another piece of advice that really helped me - if you don't use one already anon, find a reference manager software that you like. Your university may give you access to something like endnote or mendeley, I personally use zotero (it's free!). The plugin toolbar for word is super useful; you'll be able to configure the citations and bibliography to a style that suits your discipline. I like to shortcut the 'add reference' command to quickly add an in-line citation when I'm writing, and it'll automatically add the full appropriately formatted reference to the bib. Best of luck with the thesis anon!"
Yes I second this! I also use Zotero and it's a real time saver but be careful to double check because it might mess up :)
I am constantly seeing people trying to puzzle out what's "ruining books" and it makes me more and more tired. Read a different book. You have more choice in reading material than at any other point in all of history. No one thing can be ruining ALL of them.
A regular part of my job is trying to reach out to people who have been quietly trying to make their community a better place; the volunteers, the teachers, the fucking. People who rehabilitate injured wild owls in a Quonset hut in the woods, and to a one this is the kind of person who immediately reviles at recognition. The kind of person who immediately says that they never got into this to get praise for it, and that they’d infinitely prefer to quietly plug away at this anonymously forever.
And from this I’ve always drawn two conclusions:
To always distrust Mr. Beast and his ilk who always want their acts of charity done on film, because the people who really want to do good and have no motives to do it besides the doing it never want recognition for it, and
That there are, in the dark, in the quiet, always people who are doing good, and the reason you don’t hear about it is because they’d rather die than receive recognition for it, but they’re real; they do exist. And you are never alone
Our local credit union did something kind of brilliant about this - when they wanted to help, instead of introducing Yet Another Corporate Award, they just started... Paying for mental healthcare for the staff at organizations that recieve grants from them. I don't think I've ever seen anyone - let alone a corporation - so strongly understand that "support" and "recognition" are such different things.
