SWOT Analysis: the O and T part

After a longer hiatus than intended, I now present the second half of my SWOT Analysis.

Opportunities:
What are the [business] personal goals you are currently working towards?

Goal: As I have said, I am trying to find satisfaction in my work life. Or perhaps, more accurately, the right amount of satisfaction in my work life.*$ I'm trying to determine if I should return to a 'regular' job, or go full-force into a 'creative' job.

How could I improve myself?

Aerials: Take more teach trainings to improve my skills as an instructor. I'm hoping to take a teacher training course this summer, which will build on the previous two I've taken. I could also look into flexibility workshops (so I can give students safe advice on stretching), or possibly yoga workshops (to improve my knowledge of body mechanics).

I would also like to be a better aerialist in general. Watching my daughter take classes in gymnastics and swimming (even though classes at this age level [3.5 years] are very basic) I miss having semi-regular instruction. I need someone to give me reminders about what my toes are doing (especially the left ones), or whether or not my legs are straight.

Writing: I really ought to get involved in some kind of writing group if I'm going to get back at it. I can't operate in silo. As much as I like to work alone, I need feedback and I need editing. I also need to learn how to better market my self-published books.

Librarian/Research Positions: If I want to get back into librarianship, I probably need to take a course or two. Some topics that occur to me as useful or potentially interesting are: database management, information literacy, some kind of course on reference librarianship, or maybe something on social media use. If I decided to take the research route, my current job is probably doing a decent job at giving me recent, updated skills.

Other: I feel like workshops or courses in a variety of computer-related skills such as social media use, and software like Adobe, or some other graphics-type program couldn't hurt. I can make a passable (if barely) flyer or fact sheet, or book cover, in Microsoft Publisher, but it's a laborious process. I think I would enjoy actually knowing how to use such a program and having some basic knowledge of this would probably make me more appealing in the work force.

As I take it, the Opportunities part is mostly about how I would like to improve myself to make myself better at whatever job/career path I choose. In an ideal world, I would do all the things listed above, be a better aerialist, aerial instructor, writer, and creator of media. Interestingly, being a better librarian or researcher didn't immediately fit into that previously sentence (and not because I think I'm amazing in these areas).

* I'm hoping to do a post in the near future about about the complex feelings and thoughts I have to confront when I'm on (or even thinking about) my day job.
$ Having written this sentence, I wonder if I also need to work on re-framing what I consider to be work satisfaction. Food for thought. Chomp, chomp.

Threats:
What obstacles do you face?

Me.

I could end it there, but that's not very thorough.

I am unable to commit to any one decision, meaning I'm trying to juggle too many things. I'm trying to do aerials (training, stretching, learning new things, teaching), write, work a day job (which could be up to 21 hours a week), help manage my household, and be the primary care giver to my daughter. Trying to balance all these things means I'm not giving as much as I could, or should, to any one thing. Further, it means I'm not particularly good at any of these things.

Other questions to consider in this category, don't translate quite so well to my personal exploration, since they're looking at the strengths of Competitors, and what's going on in the Industry/Economy. At least I don't think the translate, or maybe I'm simply getting tired of SWOT Analysis and don't want to think about these questions anymore. Perhaps the questions of competitors and industry/economy will make more sense once I'd decided what path I want to pursue.

Overall, I think I am my biggest threat. I'm so concerned about making the wrong choice that it leads me to make no choice. And by not making a choice, trying to make do by juggling multiple options, is leaving me tired and stressed, and at least moderately unhappy.

Where does this leave me? I think another post is yet required to finish this analysis. I've put down a lot of thoughts and I need to think about this further.

Ciao,

Andrea

A selfie from this weekend (May 26th), prior to a 'rare' public performance at the Hohner Porch Party.

Month three, or is it four? Self-refection with SWOT Analysis

I managed to get myself back on track, slightly, during March with my self-refection efforts. Then I wound up sick for the first two weeks of April--cold and flu stuff, but still, it's sucked. I'm rarely sick enough to warrant my taking time off work, but I had to take a day off from both my jobs. Yuck. Anyway, my being sick derailed my efforts to complete my review of March's efforts to consider my life.

For March I opted to use SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis. I realize this is a method for businesses to make decisions, but I thought the different way of looking at my problem might be useful.

Strengths:
Strengths, Experiences, What makes you unique

• Creative*--I'm a writer, reasonably artistic, a half-decent eye for what looks 'good.'
• Reliable--I almost never miss a day (the last week excepted), never show up late.
• Independent worker--I don't need constant reminders, or a hovering supervisor to get my work done.
• Researcher and librarian--10+ year experience in academic research, with involvement in various stages and various roles of the research.
• Small group fitness instructor--2 years experience in teaching aerial circus skills, speaking in front of small groups, class management.
• Baker and cook--need baked goods?
• Seamstress

After some discussion, Andrew told me that: "You are very good at doing whatever it is you need to do for the job in front of you."

I'm not quite sure how to sum that up, maybe: Gets Shit Done?

*I always say I'm creative, but what does this mean, really? How much of a strength is this? Why do I always think of myself as creative? I'm beginning to wonder.

Weaknesses:
Areas for improvement, resources needed, education required

• Initiative--This may seem kinda of weird. I'm really good at doing tasks assigned to me and completing them on time. What I'm not so great at is, when I'm told something general needs to be done about this huge thing, figuring out what I should do about it, or where I should start. Being presented with an overarching or generic problem with no specific requests on how to fix it stresses me out.
• Timid/Conflict Adverse--I almost always prefer to handle things via email if I can. Please don't get in my face.
• Jealous--I constantly struggle with feelings of jealousy, especially when I see someone have an awesome opportunity open up to themselves, to which I have no share (but wish I could).
• Insecure/Lack of Confidence--Seriously, my head is a mess.
• No business sense--Hence why my self-published novels have sold very little.
• No specific goals--I tend to think in generalizations...

Here's a thing I learned from doing SWOT: I've always been a dreamer. I've spent a lot of car and bus trips daydreaming. I used to spend a lot of boring nights as a child and teenager wishing something random and amazing would happen to me, at my house in the countryside.

Dreaming doesn't translate into success. At least not directly.

I have dreamed of being a writer for about at long as I can remember. I have three full novels sitting on Amazon Kindle doing only slightly less than nothing. I have failed to do anything about this. I haven't learned how to market myself. I haven't learned how to make a better cover for my novels to make them more attractive. I haven't learned how to use a Kindle marketing campaign. I haven't even stood on street corners handing out flyers for my books.

(I have, in fact, spent years sending my first to novels [Cimwai's Bay and The Cure] to agents and publishers, to mostly no avail.)

If I choose to take the artist's route for the rest of my life, I have to learn how to do this. Yes, I love to write, it makes me feel good when I've completed a (in my opinion) particularly delectable scene. HOWEVER. I would also like to make a small sum from my efforts.

I have to take initiative to make my dreams come true.

Ciao,

Andrea

P.S. I'll finish the last 2 points of my SWOT Analysis next time...this post got long.

Photography by Alexa Baker--because she is awesome and makes me look awesome.

A trip to Pittsburgh: improving my skills as a librarian

I'm behind, I apologize. Thankfully, Andrew and I have been too busy to be up to much, so I haven't missed any, yet.

I don't blog often about work or librarianship, and I'll try to keep things succinct, since what I do as a 'non-traditional librarian' is anything but glamorous. However, I was quite pleased to be given the opportunity to attend a special health librarian session and thought it a suitable opportunity to talk a little bit about what I do. Two weeks ago I attended a workshop at the University of Pittsburgh titled: The Nuts and Bolts of Systematic Reviews for Librarians, a two and a half day course on systematic reviews.

Before I go any further I probably need to clarify what a systematic review is. This is something I've been doing for the past five years, since I began my job. The explanation I normally give is this: A systematic review is generally a large report where we collect all the possible literature for a given question, synthesize the evidence to answer it, and make recommendations for future practice in medicine. Wikipedia describes it as follows: A systematic review is a literature review focused on a research question that tries to identify, appraise, select and synthesize all high quality research evidence relevant to that question. Right, clear as mud? Yeah, I thought so.

The librarian's roll in this process is crucial, and so it's important that they do it right. It's their job to make sure all the possible information, be it journal articles, conference proceedings, government reports, association websites, etc., are located. If they don't do a good job, then it limits the conclusions and recommendations that the review is able to make. This is the reason why I wanted to go to this workshop, to improve my skills as a librarian and to build confidence in my ability to locate evidence for my co-workers. Also, if you recall, one of my birthday resolutions was to become a better librarian.

Okay, the workshop. First of all, I can't say enough about the instructors. They were all excellent presenters, obviously knowledgeable in the content, experienced in the actual practice of searching for reviews, at ease at presenting to a class (there were about 20 of us), over all friendly, and open to questions and comments throughout their sessions. The course was held in the health library at University of Pittsburgh, in a conference room, unfortunately with no windows (probably better as I'd be inclined to watch what was going on outside). We were seated in small groups, each with our own laptop to work on which were equipped with Internet connectivity, and a thumb drive with all the slides from all of the sessions.

The first day was pretty much review for me as I've been completely immersed in the world of systematic reviews for the last five years as a research assistant, and more recently as a librarian and project coordinator. However, not all the librarians there had actually done systematic review searching, and probably fewer were familiar with the entire review process, so it was a necessary discussion. On the plus side, I was able to provide comments/discussion from my own experiences, and hopefully I didn't annoy people by talking too much. Throughout the workshop they discussed the new Institute of Medicine Standards for Systematic Reviews of Comparative Effectiveness, which I appreciated both because it shows they're keeping their content up-to-date (the Standards were released this spring) and because we've been discussing them at work.

The remaining day and a half focused on the librarian's role in the systematic review, which as I noted above is extremely important. We covered topics like how to harvest search terms, which can be a lengthy and difficult process. In systematic review searching you have to undercover all the different 'official' index terms used by the databases, then you have to think of every possible synonym for your topic, and how it might be combined in phrases, etc. The second half of the day was primarily spent in a discussion of grey literature, a topic that I was particularly keen to learn more about. Grey literature is the hard to find, non-traditional literature that's generally not indexed in databases, and can include: conference proceedings, FDA reports, independent reports from specialized associations, etc. It was a long afternoon and a bit tiring. I need to go back over my notes from the entire day to refresh my memory of the topics and resources discussed.

The last morning was quite honestly something of a blur. My brain was tired (amazing what two days straight in a classroom can do to you, how did I manage as a child?), and I was looking forward to getting home and seeing Andrew. However, we still covered important topics including hand searching (reading line-by-line the indexes of particular journals of interest), and writing up the search for the methods section of the review.

All-in-all, it was completely worth it. I learned new methods, met new people, ate great food and visited a new place. I'll leave you with a few pictures of the University and surrounding area.

Ciao,

Andrea

The Cathedral of Learning, a beautiful, towering landmark at the University of Pittsburgh.

There were a couple of Carnegie museums around the University, unfornately they all closed at 5:00 pm, so I was unable to visit any of them.

A school for the blind.

Houses in the surrounding area.

A pretty gateway to someone's home.

G20 reference librarian on duty, online

I am not a reference librarian. I'm a research librarian, and presently I am only half of one of those. So, when a posting came out across the U of A library school listerv looking for volunteers to help with an online reference service for accredited media for the G20 summit, I'm not exactly sure what possessed me to put my name forward. I have since begun to feel nervous about the prospect of having to handle questions from only God knows where and God knows who; however, I'm stuck with the task now, so I'll have to find a way to manage.

Two truths: 1) I put my name forward because lately I've been feeling bad about my lack of volunteer activity*. I used to be a girl guide leader, but stopped that when I went back to school. I'm not inclined to return to this as I'm not a huge fan of the way the girl guide program has gone (i.e. less camping, more focus on trying to be "hip"). I had hoped I might be able to be a Can Skate figure skating coach this season, but at present I don't actually have the qualification for this (hopefully I can fix that over the next year); and 2) I thought it might be good for the CV/networking aspect of my career since the project is headed by the librarians at the University of Waterloo, where at least Andrew would like to work one day. I might too, depending on how things go. I guess actually there are three truths: 3) it also sounded sort of cool in the email.

So what exactly is this gig? Well, as I mentioned above, the UW librarians along with OpenText (another Waterloo company) have put together a forum for attendees and members of the accredited media covering the G8 and G20 summits to go to for assistance on questions related to the summits. Inside the Website are a number of different "rooms," or forums relating to a variety of topics, such as different G-8 and G-20 countries, Climate Change, Financial Regulations, and Global Economy. These areas contain spaces for uploading/downloading documents, and a wiki that users can contribute to. The two most important for me are: Ask Librarian and Library Room. In either of these areas users can pose research questions with which they require help. The hope is that most of the answers should be locatable either through the other G20Net rooms, or government and other official Websites, etc.

The whole idea is meant to be an experiment in social networking and reference services, with a small army of librarians (primarily from UW, U of T and UWO, and 3 additional helping hands from the U of A) ready to take questions from 5:00 am to midnight EST every day. So far things have been pretty quite in the library rooms, which as you might have guessed from my comments above, I'm not too concerned about. I have just started my second out of four shifts and from scrolling through the days events there's been approximately two questions all told. I suppose I don't want the whole of my experience to go by without having to answer a single quiry, but I am presently on duty after 9:00 pm EST, and have to imagine that most people are done for the day in Ontario (both reporters and politicians).

I'll try to remember put up a quick post after my experience is over to comment on how things went.

Ciao,

Andrea

*I often feel like I should be more socially active, ideally through volunteering with some kind of non-profit organization; however, working standard office hours and having creative writing as a hobby/hopefully one day career make it difficult to scrounge out the extra time do do this.

Christmas party weekend

This weekend Andrew and I attended two Christmas parties. For us that makes for quite a busy weekend. They were also two very different Christmas parties. The first was for the library school students (which took place at the school) and it was a potluck. It was nice. I brought an enormous cheesecake, which received some high praises (including that it was "orgasmic" cheesecake). The spread of food was quite excellent and the company enjoyable. After dinner most of us eventually crowded into a room with an overhead projector and played Rock Band.


Chocolate-mint marble cheesecake.

The second party was held by one of the professors from the mechanical engineering department. The party included a mix of some of the younger professors from the department, grad students and I think at least one staff member. We also had a good time there. The host's condo was new and quite attractive, with hardwood floors and a granite counter top in the kitchen. They offered the guests and excellent spread of deserts and drinks. I had a fairly substantial amount of white wine, but was surprisingly feeling fine at the end of the night (perhaps all of the Bree and crackers soaked up the alcohol). Discussion filled most of the evening.

We had a great time at both parties, but it struck me how different they both were--not just because one party was full of librarians and the other of engineers. The library party was very low budget. This was fine and I was actually surprised to hear that some students were disappointed that something more lavish (such as a dinner in a restaurant) and therefore more expensive, was not organized. The engineering party was also low budget (for us), but it was held in an attractive apartment, were it was obvious that the inhabitants had a comfortable income.

Sometimes I feel a little uncomfortable in the fact that amongst many of my friends, Andrew and I are the most well off. It helps a great deal that there are two of us, of course. But, I think some of it is because we tend not to be as extravagant in our spending as some people our age. I don't want to go on a wild rant about this, so I think I'll leave it there. All there.

Ciao,

Andrea