Tag Archives: professional development

Old Dog, New Tricks

5 Oct

I write often in this spot about professional development, the importance of continuing to expand the skills we need to remain relevant in our work, and how curiosity plays the biggest role, in my opinion, in keeping one ever-growing and ever-learning. I thought about the topic more last night as I was driving home from an absolutely fantastic evening at the Brown University Arts Initiative. The show was a songwriting master class and performance led by Rosanne Cash and John Leventhal. (Any regular reader of this blog knows of my admiration and “awestruckness” of Rosanne, thus I won’t repeat it here.) This was the inaugural program in this new series that features accomplished musicians and songwriters to the campus to both perform and offer critique of students taking part in Brown’s Songwriting Master Class. Four incredibly talented young people played one song each, followed by thoughts and comments and suggestions from Cash and Leventhal. It was such a rich time, being able to hear individuals so proficient in something talk about their processes, offer tips that work for them, provide insights into how they chose this over that, etc. I’m grateful to Brown for starting this new program and look forward to attending future events. If you’re in the neighborhood, I encourage you to do the same.

My 45-minute drive home had me thinking about youth – and how I am far from that time in life now. I thought about those young people and some of the comments that they received from Rosanne and John. I thought about how they have a lifetime ahead of them to hone a craft, if they so choose. It started to become depressing, given that I just started writing songs about a year ago (not counting silly songs about science that borrow familiar tunes others penned). How can I ever become good at it?

But before I spent too long at my pity party, I began thinking this … 

I decided to learn to play the drums when I was in my early 30s. I loved it. Still do. When we moved to an apartment that put a cramp on my pursuits in percussion, I picked up a mandolin, found some classes, found a teacher, and got to it. I was in my 40s then. I was knocking on the door of 50 when I performed for the first time ever at an open mic. I was 50 when I joined some friends in a band. And just last year, at the ripe young age of 53, I went to my first songwriting camp and began to write my first “for real” songs. At 54, I started hosting a radio show on my local community radio station and I’m about to launch a new podcast. At 55 … well, I’m not quite there yet, so we’ll just wait and see what comes next. 

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Reviewing this timeline in my head, I realized a few things. One, I’m a late bloomer when it comes to music. While I have always – ALWAYS – been a fan and collector and a reader of the art, I came to be a participant later in life. True, I took piano lessons for years as a kid, but it was really to justify my mom buying a piano for the house. She loved to play and had done so her whole life. Me, I was the tomboy who was happier playing ball with my older brother and his friends. But I did walk down the street to Mr. Cornett’s house each week, faithfully, for a number of years. Until I was paroled. Looking back, I needed to find music. It wasn’t going to find me.

Second, it is my nature to meander. I have now been in the same profession working at the same place longer, by far, than anything I ever did or any place I ever worked previously. It is one of my favorite professional development activities to lead, having people write down all of the jobs that they’ve ever had in life and all of the things that they subsequently know how to do because of those experiences. My lists are long. I’ve done many things, I have many interests, and I have the student loans to back it up. And I’ve come to appreciate this characteristic of myself over time. I like that I like a lot of things. I enjoy dabbling in all sorts of stuff. I used to believe that the drawback to this quality is that I’d never become very good at anything – “Jack of all trades, master of none” kind of thinking. There’s some truth to it, but it’s a choice we have to make in life. Some people choose to live all over the world while others, like my grandmother, live 94 years within the same city limits. Neither is better than the other. They are both valuable.

Which brings me to the third thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately as it pertains lifetime learning, professional growth, and the continuing work we do to find our place – whether professionally or personally. We can think of life in the singular or the plural. We can believe that we live one life or we can relish in living many. It’s a state of mind, I believe. I’ve surely lived more of my years already that I’ve left to live, but I’m drawn more lately to wondering about what to do with the different lives that I’ve yet to live and I like to believe that I’ve got maybe one or two left. 

What will I do with them? Maybe I’ll develop and lead more professional workshops around these things, encouraging other librarians to tap into and nurture their creative sides in their work. Maybe I’ll seek out something in the music industry that takes advantage of my skill set. Maybe radio. Maybe I’ll continue doodling data visualizations and writing reports about the cool things that happen via the UMCCTS. Who knows?

There are obstacles to thinking and living this way. We do live in a society that focuses much more on nurturing young people, those with years ahead to give to something, rather than older adults who may cost more and not give the ROI an entity seeks. It’s hard to find fellowships or internships or opportunities that allow one to learn a new profession later in life, but that said, it’s not impossible. (ProFellow is one helpful resource here.)

For me, I believe the most important thing is to remember that we don’t need to be young to either learn – or become good at – something new. It’s all in the mindset we choose to adopt. Let’s all keep growing together!

I think I’ll write a song during lunch. 

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Be Ye Kind …

26 Jun

[The following post was written originally to appear on the blog of the North Atlantic Health Sciences Libraries chapter of the Medical Library Association.]

… and other lessons from the annual meeting of the Medical Library Association.

MLA17_LOGO_500X500I want to thank the members of NAHSL’s Professional Development Committee, as well as all of the membership of NAHSL, for the award that I received to cover the cost of registration to attend the annual meeting of the Medical Library Association that took place in Seattle, WA last month. As always, it was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with old friends and colleagues, meet lots of new people, network with those who do similar work, learn some nuggets of gold to put into practice back home, and of course, to see and to share the work that we all do as medical and health sciences librarians – or in my case, a Research Evaluation Analyst, aka a “Librarian by Any Other Name.”

I experienced a few highlights of the meeting including participating on a panel discussion with colleagues from several other institutions to talk about our work measuring and tracking the impact of research. I also really enjoyed Julie Sollenberger’s Janet Doe lecture. I have the honor of knowing Julie a little bit, so her choice of topic – kindness and how practicing it shapes not only our work, but our very beings – was spot on. She is a wonderfully kind person – one who lives what she preaches. It was a special plenary.

For this post, though, I want to reflect on another plenary session, i.e. the McGovern Lecture, given this year by Julie Angus, a scientist, bestselling author, and winner of the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year Award for her accomplishment as the first woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean, mainland to mainland. When I first saw that she was one of the keynote speakers this year and I saw the title of her talk, “Rowing Across the Atlantic: Strategies to Reach Your Goals,” I admit that I said to myself, “What in the world does this have to do with medical librarians and/or libraries?” And in truth, much of her talk came across as canned, meaning it struck me as likely the same talk that she gives to any audience. Yes, she threw in a few library references, but it was pretty general in nature – your typical motivational talk by a motivating person. Don’t read this as negative criticism. I enjoyed the talk and I’ll likely borrow a copy of her book from my local library and read it. It’s a great story – and she told it well. And I did take away two important things from it – two points that made it into my notes:

First, was the importance Angus placed on baby steps. In her talk she said, “When people ask, ‘What’s the most important thing that you’ve brought out of this journey?’, undoubtedly, it’s the importance of baby steps. Eventually all of those baby steps added up and as a result, we achieved our dream.” This point reminded me of the words of another adventurer, the climber, Joe Simpson. (If you like adventure and you’ve never seen the dramatized documentary, “Touching the Void,” seek it out!) Stuck in a life-or-death situation during a climb, he says, “You have to make decisions. You have to keep making decisions, even if they’re wrong decisions. If you don’t make decisions, you’re stuffed.” (He’s British, in case you wonder the “stuffed” reference.) Baby steps and continuous decision-making are crucial not only in big adventures, but in day-to-day life. It’s how we get from Point A to Point B, how we continue to be relevant in a changing work environment, how we continue to find fulfilment in our work. Complacency, apathy, dullness in the daily work is a career killer – not only for an individual, but for an entire organization. THAT is a message I found quite relevant – a great take-away from the talk.

The second thing I noted was the discussion that I followed during the Lecture; the back-channel, if you will. Following the #MLANET17 Twitter stream, I discovered that while I was thinking Angus’ talk was a bit predictable, LOTS of my colleagues did not. She would say something and someone would immediately apply the thought or the message to something in his/her career or workplace. It was wonderful to see all of the connections people were making between the Lecture and their lives. I love following the Twitter stream throughout the conference, generally to see what others are learning in concurrent sessions that I’m not attending, but it was also a real treat to see a motivational speaker truly motivating an awful lot of the audience with her talk. It’s hard to argue that this isn’t just what the planning committee wanted when they signed her up and I credit them for the good pick.

I’m off to the Special Library Association’s annual meeting in Phoenix this coming week. I had a paper selected for presentation. It’s going to be interesting as I don’t know many people in SLA. It will be like going to my first MLA meeting many years ago now. I’m a little nervous, but the one thing that that eases my nerves is that I do know that it’s pretty hard to find a librarian conference that doesn’t leave me wanting for good stuff. I look forward to that – and again thank NAHSL for helping me get to Seattle. It’s a terrific benefit of belonging to and serving the organization.

 

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Rules of Travel

7 Nov
sally-and-janene_their-finest-hour

With my favorite Aussie, Janene Batten, medical librarian extraordinaire at Yale Medical School and Yale School of Nursing.

(This was originally posted on NAHSL Blog, the official blog of the North Atlantic Health Sciences Libraries, Inc. It’s reposted here with my own permission. Heh!)

One of my favorite singer-songwriters, Rosanne Cash, has a song titled, “Rules of Travel.” It’s completely unrelated to the content of this blog post, but it’s a great lead-in and/or title for it. I also realize that I’m not completely following the rules of NAHSL Professional Development Award blog posts, but please stick with me. It’ll make sense…

I have the great fortune to be on some short list for speakers for library conferences. I receive several invitations each year to travel to state or regional meetings, or library school classes, to talk about what I do for a living. I like to think that it’s because I do interesting things, that I’ve knitted together an interesting career path (not that I knit, but enough librarians do to get the metaphor). Enough folks have told me that they’ve read my blog for years and I know that this gets me invites. And I also like to think that I’m somewhat entertaining. At least to some people.

Anyhoooo… when I receive such invitations, I have some rules of travel that I try my best to apply. One of these is that if the content of the conference is of the slightest interest and/or relevance to my work – good odds, since these are library/information professional conferences – I ask that I receive free registration to attend the whole meeting. I don’t ask for much, if anything, to speak, so I figure it’s a good deal for both me and the group doing the inviting. I always learn things and I get to meet so many wonderful colleagues from all over the place.

The week before NAHSL’s annual meeting this year, I traveled to Detroit to give a keynote at the Michigan Health Sciences Library Association. The opening speaker for the meeting was Thomas Buchmueller, PhD, a health economist and professor at the University of Michigan. He teaches and does research within the School of Public Health there, focusing on “the economics of health insurance and related public policy issues.” (MHSLA program bio) In his talk, “Insured by Obamacare: Early Evidence of the Coverage Effects of the Affordable Care Act,” Dr. Buchmueller described the private coverage provisions of the ACA as a 3-legged stool. One leg represents underwriting reforms, an aspect the overwhelming majority of Americans support. The second is the individual mandate, the leg that has caused no end of trouble for the law, particularly given that the third leg, premium tax credits, haven’t kept up. The second and third legs are dependent upon one another for success.

For me, Dr. Buchmueller’s talk was a terrific lead-up to the first plenary speaker at NAHSL 2016, Jack Hughes, MD, from the Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Hughes also took on the topic of health care / health insurance / the ACA in his talk. His description of the problem as “the iron triangle” fit so well with the 3-legged stool metaphor. The 3 sides of the Triangle – Cost, Access, and Quality – are all connected and addressing one aspect cannot and does not occur without effecting the others. The statistics presented in both of these talks are, in my opinion, both hopeful and shameful. Early evidence shows that the ACA has positively affected the numbers of Americans who are insured and who seek preventive health care both earlier and more often, thus reducing many expensive illnesses / procedures down the line. But at the same time, the issue of unbridled cost remains one that must be addressed before we will ever see and/or experience effective change in our health care system. Quality suffers, people suffer, and the American health system thus lags woefully behind those found in countries comparable to us in wealth and development.

I so appreciated hearing these two talks within a short period of time. I learned a great deal. I also really enjoyed following the back-channel, Twitter discussion on #NAHSL2016 that took place during Dr. Hughes’ talk. The questions of what defines American society, the beliefs the country was founded upon, the underlying sense of independence, our holding this up as the ideal of who we are as a nation/people… all of these came up in a GREAT discussion on how this ideal will or even can be reconciled with the ideas related to “health care for all.” I loved it! I love the passionate thoughts and knowledge-based opinions of my colleagues. It’s such a great characteristic of our profession. (As an aside, I also loved how Dr. Hughes’ tapped into this very thing with his polling exercises throughout his talk!)

I want to thank the NAHSL Professional Development Committee for awarding me a scholarship to help offset my expenses to travel to the conference this year. I also want to thank former NAHSL Chair, good friend, and tutor of all things Australian, Janene Batten, for letting me stay at her home during the meeting. Like so many of us, travel funds have been frozen at my institution, and the assistance of scholarships and the kindness of friends makes attending these wonderful events possible. This and a few rules of travel.

And lastly, thanks to the Program Committee for an outstanding meeting. Kudos on a job so very well done.

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