What to do, what to do

I've been working on a number of rough drafts for my statement of purpose lately.  Each time I start again in the hopes that a new thought will bring about a better, tighter description of what it is I want to get out of a degree in library sciences.

I think I am waiting until I begin volunteering at the library to have specific examples to cite.  But I do not want to continue to wait.  I offer a draft.  It is unfinished, but perhaps there may be something in it...

Often labeled as one of the less useful, a degree in English opens many doors but neglects to offer a kick through any one in particular.  Advice often pushes students towards careers in publishing, a money generating business that will provide a respectable income an impressive resume of alumni for the university.  I have wet my feet with publishing, but I find the draw of an impressive resume insufficient to gratify the very human need to feel that I impart any lasting impact on my small corner of the world.  My current job pays well enough to cover my rent, but the rote actions I perform each day fill me with a sadness and a nagging sense that I am standing on the wrong side of the creation and distribution of literature.
In absence of a syllabus, I have effected my own course of reading, and I find it rife with literature that belongs to the future.  I say this not to indicate a story’s placement thousands of years ahead of our own but to highlight to whom these works belong.  Literature for young adults and children opens doors the first of all those many doors, inviting young readers to investigate mysterious figures alongside Nancy Drew or discover empathy for those who must learn to coordinate two cultures through the concerns of Jin Wang in American Born Chinese.  But it is not only the unfamiliar to which young readers are drawn.  John Green writes stories about relatively average high school students who find themselves caught in something dramatic for a short period of time.  All of these stories access the multitude of desires for young minds: to encounter the fantastic, explore the traditional, and understand the phenomenal in the seemingly ordinary.
It is not the business of publishing these stories in which I want to be involved.  I have seen and experienced the solitude required of an editor; I have mourned the marathon between when a proposal for a new book first crosses the threshold of the publishing house and when it finally becomes available to the audience for which it was conceived.  The process is necessary and important, of course, but I know I am on the wrong side.  I do not want to make books come into being; I want to make them come alive.  I do not want to work to think of books distributed for the purpose of selling as many as possible.  I want to work to circulate books into as many hands as possible without the worry of inflicting cost.  

I adore reading on my own, but it is much more gratifying to know that the reward for reading a particularly challenging or enjoyable text is that the experience has been shared with others.  English departments foster this for college students through classrooms and departmental activities.  Outside of academia, this is the role of the library.  I still return to the English department of my alma mater, happy to volunteer my time to promote departmental activities that foster.  While an undergraduate, I helped with numerous student supported programs for high school students and younger that brought together young readers and writers from throughout the community for a day full of events specifically designed to cheer them on to continue following their dreams.

Potential other projects to start soon.   I hope.  I am bearing up to buy a desk; it will be my present to myself if one or both of the job potentials pans out.  We shall see, we shall see.