The Inept Intern

My introduction to the professional world of information organization began with watching Patricia pull up an unfamiliar computer screen from who-knows-where and proceed to rapidly click in various parts of a template, changing some things, adding others and then calling it good.

"See," she said, " that's all you need to do."

On my second day, it was revealed that I was conducting searches with the incorrect criteria and, since my method would often return the same results as the desired criteria, it didn't occur to me that I might be doing it incorrectly. Well, until it was pointed out to me:

"What are you doing? Why are you searching that way?"

Um, because I'm a total idiot and wasn't paying attention when you whipped through an instruction session that I wasn't able to follow, but thought that I had. That's what I wanted to say. Instead, I sat there somewhat paralyzed willing the ground to open up and swallow me whole and then wake up in my bed to discover that it was only a bad dream.

Nevermind that I'd never used this particular software and that I'd had no experience at all doing any hands-on cataloging. I started asking questions at the rate of one per millisecond. I wanted to know exactly what she was doing, how she was doing it and why.

I've taken on an internship in a local-ish suburban/rural public library where it seems many of the library employees don't really care so much about reading, aren't very friendly and know pretty much diddly-squat about pop culture. On top of that, none of them seemed to have any clue as to who Nancy Pearl was. This, it seemed, was a mere job to them. Employment and nothing more. What kind of Librarian Twilight Zone have I stumbled into?

I continued asking a lot of questions. I wanted to know what I was doing and not just learn the factory imprint of the task, but to capture a true understanding of the philosophy behind the required actions. This seemed to perturb Patricia. I suspect that when she signed on to obtain an intern, she saw this as an opportunity to keep costs down and productivity up and not so much as an opportunity to nurture a curious mind and mentor a student in her chosen field.

My suspicions of her irritation with my continued queries were confirmed when, several times throughout the day, others would say hello to her and ask her how she is doing and she would reply by bemoaning her lack of productivity due to "all of the interruptions" and then I would feel terrible about being the cause of 99.9% of those interruptions.

So I stopped interrupting her.

I would then save all of my items with questions in a pile so that I only had to interrupt her once. This didn't go over so well, either. She simply couldn't understand why on earth I would let it all pile up like that. Frankly, it made perfect sense to me, particularly since the same question would often apply to multiple items and so one answer to one question would knock out about four or five items. She reprimanded me with her words, telling me to ask her when I had a question. Of course, then she would don her headphones and privately listen to music while she worked.

I then seemed to be on the right track for a couple of weeks. Well, seemed anyway.

I came in one day to a stern Patricia face and when the lips moved, the words "We need to talk" emerged, piercing me and causing me to contemplate turning on my heels and walking out to my car, never to return again. What would happen if I did that? Would I still have enough credits to graduate in June? What about the $$$ I'd plunked down for this opportunity?

Turns out, there were some steps I was overlooking in my cataloging. Why was I overlooking these steps, you may ask? Because I had not been taught them - that is why.

Problem is, Patricia was convinced that she HAD taught me these things. How can this be, you ask?

Well, there is another intern, also in my grad program, who is there to learn the same things as I. Turns out Patricia (perhaps not realizing that there are two of us) sometimes teaches him things on days that I'm not there and is under the impression that she has taught me these things. So I am then held accountable for things I haven't even been taught.

Very frustrating, particularly when I try to tell Patricia that I haven't been shown how to do something yet and she is convinced that I have and tells me that she must not have made herself clear. Ayayayayay.

And if that weren't bad enough, I watched in horror as Patricia tormented a high-schooler (let's call him 'Tim') who is volunteering at the library and was under Patricia's charge. Tim was working on putting some labels on some new cd cases and was listening to his iPod and working quietly. He gets up to use the restroom and, after about 7 minutes, Patricia begins to wonder aloud what is keeping him. She exclaims, "I seem to have a student who is more interested in hiding in the bathroom than in working."

A pit began to form in my stomach and my heart ached for Tim, who was in for some sort of degradation that will likely be the cause of a lifetime of gastrointestinal issues. I began an attempt to telekinetically lure Tim from the bathroom to save him from what looked to be complete and utter humiliation.

But I have no telekinesis, I only pretend that I do.

A good three more minutes passed and Patricia was at the bathroom door, knocking loudly and saying, "Are you going to come out soon?"

It was then that I made a mental note to myself to only visit the restroom when Patricia was on her lunch break.