How a Ghost in the Library Got Me a Job in the White House
When I was in graduate school, I worked in the gifts department of the university library. My job was to process, sort, and acknowledge all books donated to campus. Late one afternoon, I was stacking books on shelves deep in the expansive chambers of the building, alone – or so I thought.
At the time, I was wrapping up my master’s degree. One of the hallmarks of my program was that it allowed graduate students a two-year hiatus between the MA and PhD. Master’s students who were unsure about pursuing doctoral work could leave for 24 months and petition to reenter the department without having to fully reapply. In hindsight, it was a brilliant sorting mechanism, as most MA students did not go on to pursue their PhD, despite initially entering the program thinking that they would.
I was struggling with the decision of whether to spread my wings a bit outside of academia or whether I should stay “in my lane,” so to speak, as I lacked the confidence that my training in philosophy would qualify me for any professional position beyond the ivory tower. Just prior to stacking books that afternoon, I shared this conundrum with my boss. As it turns out, however, somebody else was listening...
This article originally appeared with the American Philosophical Association. Want to know what happened? Keep reading for free on their blog.
Co-authored by David Brendel and Ryan Stelzer, Think Talk Create: Building Workplaces Fit for Humans was published by the Hachette Book Group under the PublicAffairs imprint on September 21, 2021. Now available to order!
