USF SLIS: East Coast Connection

School serves many purposes. Arguably the most important of which is to develop the skills needed to be able to perform well on the job, but i think school has a more subtle, and possibly equally important role to play. School is an opportunity for us to develop our ideals and ideas. It forces us into a mindset where we must think about the meaning of our profession, and our potential role in it. For better or worse, I spend a lot of time daydreaming about the library I would like to work in. I like to think about how it would look, how it would function, and what role it would play in the community. The problem is that the library I see didn't exist in the past, doesn't exist now, and won't exist in the future. Sure, aspects of my fantasy library have, do, and will exist, but my utopic vision will never come to fruition. Furthermore, I don't have any desire to fight to make it happen, because it can't. I could use all my intelligence, and all my effort, and the end product will never look like the library that lives in my head. I am both saddened and liberated by this line of thinking. Like the way I feel after reading Kafka or Dostoyevsky. I know this to be true, but the dream refuses to die. Whether I want to or not, every day that perfect library is going to formulate in my head, and every day, I will be jarred back into reality by the screaming ringtone of a cell phone; Left to fantasize about the library that could be.