001. Personal History

I was born in the year of the rat under the ruling planet Mercury in Little Rock, Arkansas; I graduated from UALR with a bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in Film, and then worked for about nine months in the Central Arkansas Library System. I was just a lowly page, but I loved the job; I knocked elbows with the Dewey Decimal System and learned how to maintain a poker-face when patrons asked to be directed to awkward areas of the bookshelves. While I was sorting non-fiction titles, I was also applying to MFA programs, and eventually wound up in St. Louis, Missouri. While I was a graduate student, I also taught fiction-writing courses to undergraduates, which is about as amazing or strange as it sounds, depending on your mindset. In January 2010, I bought a ticket to Canada, to attend UBC’s SLAIS program. My plan is to return to St. Louis in the winter of 2011, to complete my practicum and professional experience and finish my MLIS from a distance (since I plan on returning to my Yankee roots and settling in the States).

I’m pretty flexible in terms of what I want to do with my MLIS degree, once I, you know, actually earn it. I like the intersection of librarianship and an online environment: I’m particularly attracted to the digital humanities, since that area is pretty much a blend of my previous interests and my slightly newer interest in librarianship. At the same time, I’m one of those library students who was attracted to the profession because of my “love of books,” so working more directly with the public and being able to build a collection, create a reader’s advisory, or work on literacy programs seems amazing, too. I feel a vague need to pick a particular area of specialization, but since I’m still a student, I’m giving myself a limbo in which to be generally excited by nearly everything. Hopefully, this will all collide to result in a usable resume at some point in the future.