July 29, 2022
Figure 1: Screenshot of the Library of Congress Book Festival
The Book Festival is coming! I included it because I'm just really excited about it. I won't be going, but I really wish I was!
As far the check in goes, I'm looking at my entire academic education and I do wish I had a bit more forced variety. Sounds weird, especially since its something I'm sure I complained about in undergrad- (why do I need to take so many classes to graduate?!) but I wish I'd had a bit more exposure to different things in any of my degree programs. I changed my major like 5 times in undergrad so that definitely gave me some of the expsoure I wanted to explore, but not really. My degree was a BS so we were required to take a series of technical writing courses instead of a language. I was thrilled at the time, but I wish I had a stronger background in a foreign language for example. Or maybe a cooking class, a basic tax class,I think undergrad should definitely come with a "life skills" series. In my masters program we were rushed through- and again, I appreciated it at the time, but I wish I had taken more time to explore the field I was studying. With only 10 courses, electives need to really be spent on classes that contributed to my career (or so I thought). And for law school, same. After all the required and recommended bar prep courses, there really wasn't much time left for "exploratory" courses. But, is that even practical? Maybe I've just reached the point on my life that undegrad is sooooooo far away that I'm longing for early adulthood freedoms, haha.
The IFP webinars have been fantastic. It has been a wonderful opportunity to work with such an esteemed group of people- sometimes I'm like, these Library of Congress employees have all taken so much time of their days to work with us, it's awesome. I wasn't sure about the viritual compenent, but over the course of the summer I came to really appreciate it, especially because it is so vital to how we operate now. I do so much of my work and networking remotely, to work on these skills has truly benefitted my professional life. I know that I am able to apply much of what has been presented and for that alone I'm grateful. For me I had the greatest takeaway from the LinkedIn webinar, mostly because I do not know my way around that site and my networking skills are weak in that department. I can't say there was a least favorite because I can see the benefit to all the webinars. My only frustration was that I was not able to make it to every single one due to time zones and work/child care committments. But having such consistency and such a great schedule provided for us at the beginning of the internship really helped for planning purposes.
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