Learning Journal

Reflections
What I have learnt about my profession in the last three or four months is that there is more to it than meets the eye.  I am constantly astounded by the knowledge (internal knowledge and knowledge of resources out there) of information professionals.  I have learnt that you have to remain positive about life to enjoy your work and to turn up to work the next day and serve the next customer with a smile on your face.

What I’ve found at my current workplace, is that the low socio-economic status of the community, tends to affect how important I consider my role in the community.  To any individual that I come into contact with.  I don’t think that the library is the only live vein running through the community, but I do believe that every interaction you have with someone, is an opportunity to affect their day and possibly their life, in a positive way.

Thoughts
My general positivity and enthusiasm around work and what I do for a living has taken a dive recently, for no apparent reason, other than comparing myself to others and coming to the conclusion that I don’t stack up.  I have flip-flopped between this and my normal energetic self in the past month or two.  I know that comparing myself to other people isn’t healthy, so I try to refrain from doing so, but I keep returning to it, consciously weighing myself up against people, comparing, contrasting, analysing, nit-picking etcetera etcetera.

At the start of the course and all throughout the course I have battled with my thoughts on how I feel about working with information, and how I feel about studying.  Me and study really don’t go together all that well.
I did start out rather ambitiously at the beginning of this course, by posting every reading that I’d completed and the quotes I’d highlighted from each, in intending to refer to them in assignments (but not).  Some of my first posts were personal admissions, “I work on my site too much…” (2010, March 7), and “I also don’t know how to use RSS” (2010, March 7).  My awareness of issues in the profession is just as high as it was at the start.  I engage in a lot of “time management” and personal learning environments, such as google reader, Twitter, more than 5 list-serves, journal alert services and more.  I believe if I am to remain sane in my line of work, I need to decrease the amount of time I spend online and reading online and move away from the online environment a bit more.

Conclusions
Currently, I see myself as an information management professional, but not as a qualified information management professional.  I desperately want to get to that point, and past it.
In the future, I see myself still studying, and trying to catch up to my peers in academic status.  I actually see myself doing pretty much the same thing I am doing now, but at a higher professional level.  I love applying what I learn, to real opportunities of improving services for the customer.  In the end, we are here because someone needs to be guided in accessing something, and we have the resources to provide that.