Thing 20: My route to librarianship

This post is written for cpd 23, thing 20. I wrote before about how became a librarian in thing 10. This time I am adding a bit more to what I wrote before and linking it to The Library Routes Project

Writing this post no doubt will bring back many memories, some of which I would like to remember others I would rather forget.  My starting point to librarianship route was a little bit strange and unusual! It wasn’t my first choice to study librarianship when I applied to university. I wanted to be an architect when I was a little girl then change my mind at teenage to wanting to be a vet. Didn’t meet my university offer for veterinary science and I didn’t have a plan B. So I was unhappy and cross with myself for not being able to study what I thought is my dream subject. I was under enormous amount of pressure to decide whether I want to go to university that year or have a gap year and re apply. After a quick thinking, been realistic and not wanting to re-sit exam or to loss my chance of having a university degree I made a decision. I decided to move away from studying what I called traditional subjects and study something people knew nothing or a little about at least in my country and that was studying librarianship.  I cannot explain why I had that feeling at that time?

The librarianship course was four years course. I enjoyed most of it but most, I enjoyed annoying one of my lectures. He used to talk and referrer a lot to his time in the US whilst doing his Master& PhD and I didn’t like his style of teaching. A few months after I graduated I was luck enough for find a job in an academic library. The job was a good start for a newly qualified librarian. Also, it helped me to find my second job (Research Assistant) which had some similarities to the role of librarian in terms of search or collect, organise and analyse information /data.

I had to stop working for a few years to bring up my children. During those years I though about arming myself with some other skills, that might become handy at the some point in my life. I enrolled myself in a diploma course in translation and interpretation English/Arabic/English. After gaining the qualification I practiced as a casual interpreter for a couple of years then move on overseas where I went back to librarianship. I was school librarian at different international schools in different countries. Working overseas is a great experience particularly in international school where you meet students with different backgrounds, cultures and languages. The only downside is PD fund, employers are not keen in investing in someone they know in advanced is going to leave in a couple of years   

I am glad I became a librarian.  I think working in an educational environment with people, information and knowledge suits me more that working with animals. The feeling of reaching out to students and help them to acquire knowledge and information on all kind of formats is very rewarding.