In which there is light at the end of the graduate tunnel!

Today, I registered for the next round of grad classes. The LAST round of grad classes! That's right, friends, come December, I'm done. :D (And believe me, I'm so ready to be done.) Passing the Proficiency Exam was the last huge hurdle toward graduation, and now all that's left between me and the glasses-on-a-chain library degree is finishing out my credit hours (or, as the case may be, exceeding them because I find it impossible to pick just one more class to take).

So, as it stands, I will be taking Metadata and Digital Libraries next fall. These are both classes that I've been interested in partially from personal interests and partially from past work experiences (a huge thanks to the St. Louis Fed for introducing me to the back end of digital libraries and the wonderfulness they contain!). They're also both very popular classes in my program, and I'm very thankful to have secured a spot in both for my last semester. As they're both forward-looking classes in terms of the future of the profession, it seems fitting that I'm leaving the program on such a note, and I have suspicions that these two classes will be particularly helpful no matter where I find employment, be it libraries, archives, or anywhere else the Lord places me in the coming years.

And as I was reflecting on the past two years of this program on my drive home this afternoon, it really sunk in just how many changes I've been through in these two short years. My first public sector job in a place I never imagined myself (and wound up loving it), marriage, a new (much smaller) town, new friends and family, and multiple new vocations.... it's exhausting just thinking about it, but so rewarding at the same time. And even though I still remain worried about finding a job (you know, because we all think we need the perfect job right out of school, even though it rarely works out that way) in my chosen profession, I need to remember that it's not what I choose, but what God has already prepared for me to do.

"Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. ... So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God."
- 1 Corinthians 7:17, 24