End of the Quarter Thoughts

As the quarter has been winding down for me and I have had some time to just relax and think, I thought I would be happy. It is near the end of the quarter, I am done my work, my girlfriend is coming across the country to visit, and I am feeling fairly optimistic about summer jobs and internship opportunities. Despite all this, when I slowed down and caught my breath, I began to feel unhappy and unsettled. Although I couldn't make out why at first, I tried to get to the bottom of these emotions. I finally realized that I was unhappy with myself: unhappy with my attitude and approach to grad school.

Normally, I pride myself in being a fairly helpful, caring person. And honestly, this was one of the reasons that I decided to work in museums in the first place. I thought working in a museum would be the best way for me to use my talents in the service of others. It could be a place for me to put my passion and energy toward something I believe in, and share that passion with others, even if it means being a little tired at the end of the day.

What made me so unhappy was how quickly I had lost sight of that throughout the year. I felt as if I had changed, and not for the better. Rather than asking myself how I could help others, I was asking myself how I could make myself look better to future employers. Rather than thinking about what my talents were that I could use to make someone's day a little better, I was thinking about what I could do to beef up my resume. While I think that graduate school is the time to network, develop skills that would look good on a resume, and start to think about jobs, it is not the end the end-all be-all of our future careers. It is a tool to help us achieve what it is we would like to achieve.

I am writing this reflection on my own personal experiences in the hope that it will give others the time to stop and think about their own experiences in our graduate program, or in other graduate programs. Whenever you are feeling stressed about an assignment, busy schedule, thesis paper, or projects, I hope that you think about what is beyond the stress. First, the stress is a sign that you care about what you are doing, and that you are invested in the choices you have made to be where you are today. But it can also get in the way of seeing why we are stressing ourselves out in the first place.

While stress might be a necessary evil in motivating us to get things done, if stress overtakes the love and passion in what you are doing, slow down! We might not turn in the perfect assignment, make a perfect budget, or write the perfect thesis, but we don't need to. What we need to do is make ourselves the most effective museum professionals we are capable of being, so we can be happy with ourselves and spread that happiness along.

Evaluation Excitements

Hey everybody!  Those of us in the Intro to Audience Research class got to have a Skype interview with a few experienced (and enthusiastic) evaluators yesterday, including Kathryn Owen of the Woodland Park Zoo, Kathleen Tinworth of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and Steve Yalowitz of the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI)

During the talk, Kathleen mentioned a blog she writes about her many evaluation adventures.  I asked her if she would mind if I went ahead and linked it to our own blog, and she graciously (and again, quite enthusiastically) agreed.  So, here it is:

http://exposeyourmuseum.com/

I highly recommend checking it out.  She writes a lot about new technologies and reaching out to underrepresented audiences, and it's all quite interesting stuff!