Goal Setting

I need to come up with goals for next year, a minimum of 3, and I've only got 2: (a) become more involved with a statewide academic library/librarian professional organization; (b) complete and start to execute our new assessment and outreach & marketing plans.

— Jessica Dammit (@olinj) November 14, 2018

Last week I was trying to finish my part of my annual evaluation. My boss said a lot of nice things about me, and one true not-nice thing that I have to work on, and my part should be easy, right? Wrong.

Like most bosses, my provost wants me to set goals that will:

• help the institution;
• help my department; and
• demonstrate growth and self-awareness.

I want those things as well, but I also want goals that will be manageable and, if I'm honest, be part of something I'm already doing anyway. It's like writing something on your to do list after you've finished it, just so you can cross it off. Then there's the fact that I'm still on an annual review cycle I'm faculty here, but faculty get annual reviews for the first 4 years before getting something called "continuing appointment" that is good for 4 years and includes biennial reviews. This means my goals need to be accomplish-able within one year.

So, since I was stumped, I turned to Twitter. And I got some great advice.

• separate the assessment plan and the outreach marketing plan;
• list the conferences I plan to attend and/or present at - I didn't include this because it's too similar to one I had for the year that just passed;
• include a topic I plan to explore this year that relates to my job performance; and
• a goal related to scholarship - another I didn't include because I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate long form writing and need to stop torturing myself with it, but it's a good idea for others.

I got so many good suggestions that I knew I had to share. The truth is, setting goals is a careful balancing act. You need to figure out what will bring the greatest benefit with - honesty moment - the least extra effort on your part. Or, to put it another, nicer way, you've got your day to day work to do, so you need to set goals that respect you are not an endless font of energy. 

Anyway, here's what I put in the goals section of my evaluation:

1. Become more involved with either SUNYLA or SUNY Library Council.
2. Complete and start to execute our new assessment plan.
3. Complete and start to execute our new outreach & marketing plan.
4. Learn more about change management in academic settings.
5. Work to further collaboration between the Alfred C. O’Connell Library and other departments and organizations both at GCC and in Genesee County.

I'm semi-obligated to participate in SUNY Library Council as a SUNY library administrator. We did a Functional Area Review (like a program review, but for administrative college units) last year and our findings included the need for an assessment plan and an outreach & marketing plan. I can always stand to learn more about change management. Finally, it's kind of - meaning "really really important to" - my job to find collaboration opportunities. In other words, these are all things I was going to do anyway, so I might as well get credit for them. Smart, right?

via GIPHY

One last important thing to consider is how will your supervisor and/or your institution react to unfinished goals? I know that for me, as a supervisor, as long as we can figure out why you couldn't and/or didn't finish something, I'm fine. But not everyone is going to have that reaction. Think about that long and hard before you set ambitious goals.

So how about you? How do you set goals?

What Makes It Real?

A friend of mine mentioned something about being "a real writer now" over the weekend, and it got me thinking. First, I already think of that person as a real writer since they've written for this blog and multiple articles and so on. But second, I understand what they're talking about. There's a big difference between being a thing and feeling like a thing. I believe the process of feeling real can be helped along, though, and here's some ideas of how I've helped myself (and others) move along.

• Keep a list of your accomplishments. Got retweeted by someone you admire? Received a compliment from a tough to please patron? Finished a small but important project? Write it down or keep it in a special folder on your email. I literally have a folder called "happy making" on my main gmail account.
• Speak kindly to yourself. Negative self-talk is such a hard habit to break. Believe me: I know. I've mostly broken this habit, however, by imagining I'm saying those things to someone I love. I'd never tell a good friend, "you'll never amount to anything because you made this mistake." Of course I wouldn't! Instead, I'd say something like, "well, you screwed up, but you're human. How do we repair the damage for you and move forward?" If you stop insulting yourself, maybe you can even start complimenting yourself and then believing in yourself.
• Stop comparing yourself to others. This is another idea that is easier said than done, but even a small victory with this can make a big difference. There are schools with bigger budgets and staffs; there are people younger than you with publishing contracts; there are blogs with broader readership. Besides, you only see the end result when you see the accomplishments of others. You don't see all the mistakes they made or the struggles along the way.
• Get yourself a cheering section. Simply put, I have a great group of friends who aren't afraid to call me on it when I make mistakes, but who are also quick with support. They're peer mentors and sounding boards. Friendships like this take work, so I provide the same kind of support for them. In fact, when I was trying to figure out how to talk about this, a member of my cheering section said, "You have good friends because you are awesome, so maybe go w/ MLP and friendship is magic?" And they were right. If you're an aspiring writer, court friendships with other writers. Artist? Seek out other artists. Librarian? Find other librarians. I'm sometimes humbled by the support I get, but I'm always honored by their love.

This all comes down to learning to feel comfortable when you're not in your comfort zone. Being new at something, learning and trying new things, can be hard. It's also hard to feel "real" in those endeavors, but it is possible. Be gentle with yourself and keep working on it.

Anything helpful I forgot that you've done in the past?

Worrying About My Post-PhD Life, by Abigail Phillips

source

At the moment, I’m in the final months of working on my dissertation. This means writing and crying and writing (and if we’re being honest, whining sessions while drinking with fellow doctoral students). When I entered the PhD program, I had the lofty goal of becoming LIS faculty. Now, I’m uncertain. But why else would you get a PhD if not going tenure-tracked? Why don’t you want to work in academia? A not-to-be-named faculty member has asked me this question recently. Unfortunately, I’ve had a few eye-opening experiences while presenting and attending academic conferences. I’ve also had a few eye-opening experiences while living and breathing academia for the past three years. Articles like this one by Oliver Lee about leaving a self-proclaimed “best” tenure-track faculty job, or this one by Claire Shaw and Lucy Ward about the high rate of mental illness among academics, haven’t exactly encouraged me to seek out faculty positions for post-PhD life.

Instead, I’m wondering how or even if I can go back to public libraries. While working on my PhD, I’ve applied to a few librarian positions without much luck. Maybe I talked about my research too much. Maybe my local library system is tired of doctoral students abandoning positions once they graduate. There are a lot of other possible maybes. I honestly don’t know. Before entering the doc program, I worked for six years in a small, rural public library system in Southwest Georgia. First as a library assistant while I worked my MLIS and then as a librarian. I miss you, public library work. I miss you so much. But how can I express this to public library directors? How can I convince you that although I’m probably overqualified and definitely overeducated I still want to work in a library? What do PhD holders offer public and academic libraries? How do we apply to librarian positions?

Here’s where the “selling the PhD” part comes in. I think.

First, we’re trained researchers. We can construct, plan, and carry out an entire project essentially by ourselves (this is also called a dissertation). Often this research involves interviewing people, statistics, community assessments, marketing, and management (aka handling participants and doctoral committees). While academic librarians are known to conduct research, research by librarians is undervalued in public libraries. This is disappointing, because public libraries NEED research. They need more researchers researching them (this is me), but public librarians also need to be conducting research themselves. A recent post on this blog highlights the importance of research for public libraries. Research can mean many different things within the context of public libraries. A few examples: A lot of the wonderful work EveryLibrary does is research-based. Carrying out community assessments is a type of research. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is research, which more libraries should know about and use (http://www.esri.com/what-is-gis).

Second, we are AMAZING at project management. We did complete a dissertation. Our levels of amazingness may vary, but at the very least we successfully defended our dissertation, which means we convinced a small group of people we can manage a project and write about it.

Third, we are trained instructors. We’ve taught and maybe even developed courses while working on our PhDs. Through teaching, we’ve learned the delicate balance of classroom management, lesson planning, evaluation, and incorporating technology into education.

Fourth, we are skilled presenters and great at self-marketing. Okay. Maybe. Maybe not. However, we have presented our research, our passion for libraries, and ourselves during conferences, class sessions, informal meetings, professional networking and weird conversations in bars.

Some final thoughts:

Librarians with PhDs have so much to offer the practitioner world of librarianship. We just have to figure out how to promote our degree as an advantage not a disadvantage. It sounds weird to say that having a doctorate opens a lot of doors, because it closes almost as many. I wonder if there are other LIS PhDers like me out there. We have experience in the field, working as librarians, but then we veered towards academia, and then veered (or are in the process of veering) away. This is another situation when I honestly don’t know the answer. For the most part, everyone around me still seems to be striving for a tenure-track position at a Research I (R1) university. I would love to hear from those who aren’t going that direction or who aren’t sure if they are!

Abigail Phillips is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the School of Information at Florida State University. She is currently working on her dissertation, which focuses on rural librarians as a source of support for rural cyberbullied young adults. She will defend her dissertation this spring, which means she will be graduating very, very soon and job-hunting in the meantime! You can find her on Twitter (@abigailleigh), her blog (abigailleighphillips.com), and Tumblr (www.abigaillphillips.tumblr.com/).