11:05 p.m. - 09 January 2003
The hazy mists of the future
I know that I said I wanted to go to culinary school. And, I did. But then I talked to the chef like I mentioned. And really, being a chef means working harder than I would prefer. So, no culinary school. At least, that’s the decision this month.
I have been looking at going back, though, just not for that. Since the educational opportunities are pretty limited around here, particularly in the area of post-graduate work, I’ve been focusing my search on distance learning. Which, it turns out, is also a fairly limited field. But, one of the degrees with well-established distance programs is the MLS: Master of Library Science, sometimes also known as a Master of Information Science. And as it turns out, I’ve considered getting an MLS before.
My mom was actually the one to suggest library science to me, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I’ve got such a junk brain and I love looking stuff up. Plus, I have a tendency to learn about things very quickly, especially if it’s something I’m interested in. Hell, even if I’m not interested I can at least pick out the important stuff and summarize it for someone who is, which I understand is one of the ways that you can make money with an MLS without working in a library. This appeals to me, because one of the things that turned me off about being a chef was the irregular hours. Plus, all medical schools and many larger hospitals not affiliated with a school have libraries, so I can still stay in the medical field and possibly work alongside Lee, which I’ve found is a calming thing.
I needed that calming influence after this afternoon. My boss called me into her office a few minutes before I left today. She told me that while I’ve been much better about not going online and asking her for stuff to do, I’m still doing it. Which, as you might imagine, was not news to me. But in order to remove the temptation, she’s planning to send a note to the help desk and remove IE from my machine completely.
I made a token protest, attempting to explain that I actually use it quite a bit for legitimate work – which I do. When she sends me a name and asks me to get a title and phone number, it’s the easiest thing to use. Not to mention when I want to make sure that I got the name of a caller and/or their company correct, so I use reverse lookup to double check things. Not to mention that most of the folks in administration consider me to be the internet guru, so that if they need some research, they ask me. But they can’t do that anymore. I can’t wait until the next time one of them needs something and I have to tell them that I no longer have that capability.
But really, I’m pretty Zen about it. She wants me to be busy all the time, I’ll be busy all the time. I’ll be in her office all the damn time asking for stuff to do. And I’ll make damn sure the CEO knows that I’m doing all this stuff, because I think – and I could be mistaken, I admit – that she (the CEO, not my boss) likes me and would like to keep me as a staff member. If it gets too horrible, I’ll have a nice conversation with her about how much I like the hospital and how I’d really like to stay there, but I cannot work for my boss anymore. I just have to hope that she thinks that I should stay employed at the hospital, too.
