“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Winston Churchill
Today marks the end of our school year at Prairie State College, and the end of my first school year as an academic librarian. In the meantime, I took an online instruction course that emphasized reflective writing. Therefore, as an ACRLog FYAL blogger and in the spirit of reflective writing, I would like to reflect on my first year.
In the beginning of the school year my daughter and I were wrapping up our fourth trimester. She was the only one in the house who was well rested and my husband and I were bleary eyed and foggy. I have ample events that I did things, but I don’t remember doing them. Fast forward a couple of months and by late October, early November she was sleeping through the night.
It took about a month for my brain to work again and I have a better recollection of the end of the fall semester than the beginning. With remote work, regular communication to faculty and students was critical. To accomplish this I picked a number of modalities, hoping that one would “stick.” We now have a monthly faculty newsletter (which apparently are trendy again?), a blog for students with practical tips on how to navigate college, regular social media posts, events (currently done online), and a book club. I attended a number of webinars and a couple of conferences virtually. Between austerity measures at Prairie State and the fact that I’m nursing, I was able to attend these events because they were virtual. My hope is that even after the world is a little safer this will still be an option as it removes some boundaries to conferences.
As far as my role as an instructor librarian, I think my first year went about as well as it could during a pandemic professionally. I’m proud of the work that I have done and think that I have laid a solid foundation for the next few years of “new normal.” (Whatever that means.)
As was evident from many of my entries, personally I struggled. I should say that I am in many ways privileged and even with this, it was a tough and scary environment to launch into my new career. I knew many people who got sick and one who died. We had one COVID-19 scare and have been tested multiple times. I’m not the healthiest person and I was petrified to find out what would happen if I got sick. What would happen to my daughter? My vaccine has given me reassurance and the littlest bit of freedom. My fear though is that we won’t take any lessons from this time and will simply move on as though nothing happened. This brings me back to this Winston Churchill quote. This is the end of the beginning of both the pandemic and my new career. The work continues.
