See: Librarian, Former, Part 1

Once upon a time, in what now feels like another (and in some ways, an alternate) life, I was a librarian. I'm not ashamed to admit that it's a career I chose by default, but not as alternate-universe Mary Hatch did when there was no George Bailey to marry.

I had earned a BA in Classical Studies. The history, mythology, philosophy, literature, art, architecture, and language of the ancient Greek and Roman world all fascinated me greatly, but I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I'd worked my way through college as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble, and once my course load wound down, I began to work full-time and was promoted to lead bookseller.

I was still living with my parents, and I had no plans of moving out until, at my father's insistence, I could afford to buy a house (renting was a waste of money). I had no immediate plans for my next move, and was content to continue working at the bookstore until I figured it out, until one day, my mother pointed me toward an advertisement for a career counselor in my alumni magazine.

I reached out to the career counselor, not knowing what to expect, but in her, I found someone who had all the keys to unlocking my future self, so I chose to work with her and she took me on as a client. She had me do many personality and vocational assessments, coached me on writing resumes, cover letters, and thank you letters, and put me through mock interviews.

This was the point in my life where I learned I was an INFP on the Myers-Briggs personality test. Contrary to popular belief (and what I was told at the time), INFPs are not the most uncommon personality type. An estimated 4% of the world's population are INFP, and apparently, the highest concentration of them can be found in New Zealand. This was also where I learned introversion ≠ shyness, though that's a misconception I still encounter today, and that INFPs make great librarians.

Additionally, I learned how to search for jobs effectively. This was before the days of the applicant tracking system (ATS). I could find a role to apply to online, but I still had to print out an application, complete it in ink, and put it along with my resume and cover letter into and envelope addressed to the human resources department, with the appropriate postage for the weight of it, in order to be considered for a role. A good way to stand out then was using heavier weighted, cream-colored paper, which sometimes required more than one stamp.

One of the places I applied to was Houston Public Library, where they had an opening for a library services specialist in the Humanities department. I had already decided that, if they offered me the job, I would take that as a sign that I should pursue an MS in Library Science and become a librarian. In the meantime, it couldn't hurt to study for and take the GRE. I interviewed for the position in late June, and it took them until late October to offer me the job (there were extenuating and circumstances, irrelevant to this story), and I started in mid-November that year.

It was an exciting time. I had put myself on a path to what I thought would be my career for the rest of my life, and I felt content in my choice. Reference work was pretty similar to the work I did at the bookstore, except no one was buying anything—though, to be fair, we weren't really selling anything either. We worked the reference desk in Humanities, where people asked questions about religion, languages, or literature, or they asked for specific books. We even got some of the same silly questions I would get at the bookstore, like, "Who wrote Dante's Inferno?"

In the library, though, reference was also done via email, over the phone, and via online chat. That was new and interesting for me, and the questions were much more diverse. "What was that thing Ben Franklin said about beer? What were the winning lottery numbers five years ago on this date? Can you find my grandfather's obituary in the Houston Post?" We also had to go through the collection on the open floors and the closed stacks regularly to pull books that looked like they needed replacing (or just removal).

The people I got to work with were all really smart, and I loved that. In less than a year, I would start library school and be well on my way to being a librarian like them.