Settling.

I was listening to NPR this weekend, and Cambridge Forum had the authors of The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America to discuss their research and their solutions for making the class just above the poverty line more stable. One line stuck with me when they said that teachers are not respected and often have to settle for that position, which makes the U.S. education system weaker. It’s true that many school teachers fell into that profession after not enjoying other avenues.

The same is also hugely true for librarians. I know many people act like it’s a calling, but how many librarians entered university saying, “Someday, I will be a librarian!”? I don’t know any. I know I had dreams of being a high school chemistry teacher, then a Germanic linguistics professor, before I decided/settled on library science. Saying it’s settling is sort of depressing though it may be true. I hope it’s not.