July 19, 2010

Ever Felt There Was Something You Just Had To Do?

I was an average post-secondary student in university. By average I mean I was depressed, miserable and fearful of failing and had no clue what I was spending all that money for. I was the first child of a large number of cousins to go to university and really my parents were poor so they couldn't help me out financially. I ended up withdrawing from university for a year due to poor grades and lack of resources and I came back a year later, a bit more mature, as an unclassified student. Pretty much taking the expensive, hard, long way about it. When I graduated it was by default, not actually graduating with the Bachelor's degree I finally decided on, Computer Science, but a degree based on the fact that I had a large number of electives in it, Psychology. There was one highlight of my university career, I received an A in Library Science 2000. I LOVED that class. It was the first time I actually felt I had a talent for something.

After I graduated I applied to a MLIS program in Ontario and was rejected. I promptly forged ahead and landed with an amazing company, a private boutique bank where I started as a filing assistant and worked my way up to Senior Research Assistant, supervising staff among my main responsibilities of desktop publishing and copy editing research publications. Through working at this company for ~7 years as was able to pay off tens of thousands of dollars in student loans.

It really happened like this. An incident happened at work that broke though my contentment with my job. One day I was happy and the next day I was unhappy and restless. Not too long after that I woke up one morning and realized I HAD to go back to school, which I never thought I would ever do again. I HAD to try again and apply to an MLIS program. Have you ever felt that? Like you have been knocked over the head with a sledgehammer? The decision seemed taken out of my hands, out of my control, a total subconscious realization. From one day to the next my whole axis revolved from one future to another.

Can we talk about scared, confused, angry, nerve racking, exhausted, depressed, hopeful, anxious, numb, excitement, elation and then scared again? These are just some of the emotions I have gone through since May of last year through the process of applying to enter graduate school. Come September I will be entering a Master's of Library and Information Studies program at the University of Alberta. I'm going to be focusing on Information Technology.

Though I have always been a bit of an erratic blogger I'm not quite sure what time I will have to commit to the blog once I am in school. I still want to blog and I hope I can write about some of my adventures in the MLIS program, as well as continue with the book reviews. I'm always going to be reading and its fortunate I bought all these books sitting to be read on my bookshelf, as I won't have any money to buy more, being a broke student. Hey maybe I will actually have more time to read and review books as I'll need frequent breaks from studying. Guess I will find out come September.

If you have ever had such a momentus, life-changing event happen to you, I would love to hear about it.

Wish me luck!

Photo: http://www.slis.ualberta.ca/

5 comments:

  1. Be of good cheer, Nicole. Just think how your blogging experiences have prepared you for writing papers!

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  2. Wow! How awesome to be going back to school! I contemplated it for a while but it would have had to be part time. It still might happen. Never say never!

    Good luck.

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  3. Thanks Christine. I certainly hope the blogging helps but I actually take a long time to write my blog posts so I can't imagine how long a 20 page paper will take.

    Marg that's right...never say never. I also believe taking risks leads to personal growth. So I am looking forward to it!

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  4. Congrats on making a huge decision! I got my B.A. in history and just kind of felt lost. After a couple of years I decided to get my MLIS and LOVED it. I mean LOVED it. I graduated a year ago and am on my quest to find a job I love. Good luck!!!!!

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  5. Thanks Amanda. Very glad to hear you loved the program. I'm looking forward to it and very excited to get started. Best wishes on the job search!

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