Chapter 4: The Bargain
I worked at [Academic Institution A] when I started my career, and I wanted to work in that type of institution. That was where I started. That was where I intended on being, but I didn’t have a very good experience at [Academic Institution A].
My degrees are from similar institution type schools. Very much so. The rural working-class kid that went on to get an advanced graduate degree all through those types of institutions. And so while I was at [Academic Institution A], since I knew there was a chance that the job wouldn't last, it was like, “where else might I wind up?”
And so this institution I mentioned earlier, any similar type institution could be good, just not this one.
(They said,) “You don't want to wind up on that campus. Their librarians are terrible. Their campus is terrible.”
That was where I interviewed and I knew when I applied, I'm like, “I've already been warned about this place, but, you know, I'm desperate. Can't be worse than where I am at.”
When I came out for my interview here, everyone I met was wonderful.
Turns out there had been a period of time where they had some not great people, but they all had left.
The last few were here when I interviewed, but everybody was great.
I had a really nice time.
I accepted the job. So I interviewed and shortly after I was offered the job and I accepted it.
So I did not renew my lease on my home, I waited until there were a few weeks left on my contract before I told them I wasn't coming back because I didn't....I was just nervous because I didn't have a contract in hand.
Here's where the bargain came in.
So I had not received my contract yet, and every few weeks I get a different story as to why that has been. “Oh, the academic institution leader forgot to sign it.”
“Oh, this reason.”
Oh, I think they were going through legal issues at the time as well.
And so that was a factor. Finally, two days after it's too late for me to read up my lease, I get a phone call from the academic institution leader and she's like, “I just need to talk to you about something with your contract. Give me a call back.”
That doesn't sound good. I call her and she goes, “So here's the problem. Another senior academic institution leader has decided she is not going to hire you now.”
And now if I knew then, what I know now, I probably had some legal avenues that I was not aware of. But at the time, all I heard was, we're taking the job away.
And I said, “Why?” And she goes, “She doesn't want to hire you since you don't have [a specific academic accomplishment.]”
And now none of the other librarians had what she was asking for.
In fact, not even all of our librarians had [similar specific academic accomplishment], if I remember correctly.
I think there might have been one that did.
The explanation I was given was there was a [academic institution goal] in place where the number of faculty members with [specific academic accomplishment] meant more performance funding for the institution.
She didn't want to hire anybody that didn't have it.
But that was not [brought up prior to the posting for] the job.
It wasn't part of the deal.
I had all... everything that was needed, and I was on track to finish a different [academic accomplishment] soon.
So, she said, “I can make you a deal. If you'll allow us to put in your contract that you'll achieve [specific academic accomplishments] by [a specific future time], you can still have the job.”
Not seeing any other way forward, I agreed because I don't have a place to live, and I've been, I spent the past months, planning to move.
So, this is tough.
That was the bargain, I agreed to do it.
I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I always plan to pursue more [academic accomplishments] anyway. I had made that decision my last year of undergrad.
So, it was kind of a natural progression, but it did add some extra stress to the position.
So technically I needed to accomplish this [specific academic goal with a deadline]. I [accomplished one academic goal] soon after being hired and I was having a heck of a time finding a doctoral program that I could do.
You know, the people who are advising me, they're like, “oh, just do this [ process towards a specific academic goal], it's minimal work.”
I said, “Well, no, I don't want to do that. I want it to be interesting and I want it to be relevant.”
When I was hired on as a “XXXXXX / instructional technology librarian”, I found out during my interview, incidentally, that the people that wrote the job description thought instructional technology was just the modern term for teaching.
They didn't realize, and they used phrases that were in other job ads.
They saw, but they didn't actually know what that meant.
So, my perception of what the job was going to be versus the perception of people that wrote the job description was quite different.
I was told, “don't worry, you can kind of remake the job however you want.”
So, okay, that's reasonable.
I finished my [first academic accomplishment] related to instructional technology, and I found an opportunity to [achieve a specific academic goal with a deadline] also related to instructional technology with specializations [that appealed to me].
[That academic opportunity] went away several years ago, so it had a kind of a short lifespan, but that really was the start of my career here.
Finally, they allowed me to extend my contract because I had some [other academic institution bureaucratic] issues holding me up.
So, they gave me extra time to get it done and I finished the [specific academic goal with a deadline].
It was quite an adventure, but that was the bargain.
For the instructional technology side of my job- really I just was looking at how we could better teach and expand our instruction program, what educational technologies could we bring in to support....
We tried different things over the years, [for example] clickers.
If you remember, they were a fad for a short period of time.
There were different things that we did, but really my job became more of how do we build relationships with people?
How do we show that our instruction is making a difference?
How do we... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
When I got here we were doing somewhere between 40 and 80 instruction sessions a year.
At our high point, we were doing over 400 for sure, almost 500, I think.
I'm always quick to point out that it wasn't just because of me, that was because I had faculty that was really game for it, “let's see how we can expand this and how we can do more instruction.”
How can we change the way we teach?
How can we integrate with classes and with curriculums?
That went really quite well.
I got promoted, and that all went really well up until...
Yeah, so everything was trending in a fantastic direction.
One thing that was not going in a fantastic direction was our enrollment.
We hit a kind of a plateau, and then we started dropping off again [some years later].
There was a steady decline. We're in [a specific geographic area].
That's very common for this area demographically.
People are moving out of the area.
It's an issue across the entire [area].
It's at its worst in [our specific geographic area], and I don't know if you know, but we're not [like a nearby geographic area].
[The nearby geographic area] has a ton of colleges and universities per capita compared to most other [geographic areas].
What was supposed to be kind of the “official course on the books” at this institution that librarians taught?
We didn't have any courses on information literacy, nothing like that.
So, I spent, [some time] in deep investment [on that issue],
working with other librarians around the country, really gathering information about things that other schools were doing, how they were approaching this, and designing a course that we could add, which initially the [academic institution leader] did not want.
She eventually got ousted for [legal reasons]. And various other reasons.
Incidentally, with librarians we hired afterwards, regarding [specific academic accomplishments], they realized that was a foolish requirement.
There was a problem with getting a [library specific course learning outcome] on the books, because nobody in administration thought it sounded sexy.
They're like, “how do we make this impressive?”
[I said] “Well, let me work on it.”
So, I did.
I got a [position on an academic committee].
[It was rare for] a person in my department to actually have that [position on an academic committee].
I worked through that, found out what was involved with that, got the course developed, got a lot of buy-in from some administrators, a lot of other faculty, the committee and some members of another committee to get this [library specific course learning outcome] going.
We got it approved.
When COVID hit, we went completely online.
Then [the response was] “We're not working on that anymore; we don't have time.”
Now we get into fall and we start hearing discussion about how there would also be [a major academic reorganization].
That started in fall, so now we're dealing with COVID and they hated the term “XXXXX”, [academic reorganization].
Administration would get very upset if we said “XXXXX” [academic reorganization].
We had a lot of work to do with [academic reorganization].
That finally became official, and as part of that process, everybody had their jobs reassigned.
We went from, when I started here, we had, I think XX librarians. We were down to about half that number because they kept not rehiring.
Now we're back up to, I think, XX plus 50%.
I'm kind of muddling things, telling this story a little out of order, I apologize.
One of the things that happened to us was during COVID, we went from XXX plus instruction sessions down into half that, which for us was a big drop.
There was also a decision with my position.
I would not be in [a specific area in the library department].
So, my current position, it's still instructional technology which is amorphous.
Nobody seems to understand what they really want that to be.
The main part of my job at this point is supposed to be [library related statistical duties].
So, I conducted [specific statistical studies] for the library, collected data, made suggestions, and interviewed [users].
And then the initial reaction was, “oh, we can't make those changes. That's too much. Probably that's not what people really want.”
It's like, “well, I talked to [X number of] people, it's pretty standard industry wise to gather this information.”
There has been a lot of reticence to any severe changes, in part because there's been so much change.
From going from COVID to [academic reorganization], was extremely different.
We've been through [several academic leaders] in recent years.
There's been a rapid... administration has been overturning rapidly.
So... until about now has been kind of nightmarish in terms of career.
It's definitely not what I signed up for.
One of the things that I reflect on is that years prior I was an [academic committee leadership position].
I had a lot of clout on campus.
I could go over to the administration building and say, “hey, I need to talk to [academic leader(s)],” and secretaries knew who I was, they just let me right in.
Once [academic institution reorganization], all of that clout that I had spent my career here building up, gone.
Our [academic institution leader].
He's [rarely] here.
Our [academic institution leader] is [rarely] on this campus.
It's a completely different kind of environment at this point.
And so, and actually last fall, I wound up being asked, by [another academic institution] where I had been involved with years ago, to work in their program.
So now my job is 50% in the [library science department], which I'm happy with, I like doing that, but it is, it has created a lot of instability as far as what the nature of my job is to the point where the running joke with my spouse is, I don't even know what my job is anymore.
Ever since [academic reorganization], it's like, I have this job title and I have these things in my job description that I argued against because I didn't write it and they were buzzwords.
And I told the people that wrote it, “these are buzzwords.”
And they were like, “but no, but this is what the job needs to be.”
I'm like, okay, “it literally doesn't say anything, but that's fine. I can do this since you can't define it.”
So, it's been interesting.
It's been an interesting couple of years.
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